Posted: 8/30/2030
Twenty-five years ago, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. Eighteen years ago, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane and the second-costliest hurricane. American attitudes did not change and recognize climate warming as a strategic threat to their very existence. Before 2020, opinions in the United States varied intensely enough to be considered a culture war.
As the Fourth Turning began in 2008 with the Great Recession, American politicians and the majority of the public had ignored decades of warnings about climate change, beginning with James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress. After Hurricane Sandy, 68 percent of Americans acknowledged “Global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem.”
Since the Third World War ended in 2028, we have hindsight now to see how the US dithered for decades until a WW Two style mobilization to the climax crisis was forced on America. The US military began warning politicians decades earlier that climate change was a threat multiplier and still they waited until the US was attacked.
Almost 80 years after Pearl Harbor, America finally mobilized again with an all or nothing response to the worldwide destabilization of governments and the hundreds of millions of starving refugees.
The leading edge of the chaos were the Middle East and Asian civil wars and roving gangs beginning in 2011 in Syria, with a few million refugees displaced, only a few thousand making their way to Europe and America, and by 2015, 300,000 had died in Syria.
Although President Obama launched the Clean Power Plan in 2015 with the goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, that obviously was not nearly sufficient. Net Zero soon became the new goal. Then basic survival instincts kicked in.
Just as Germany’s military intentions were clear in 1937, two years before WWII started, Global Climate Change consequences seemed obvious in 2015, well before the beginning of the Third World War. By 2009, we had moved three-quarters of the way to the two-degree target and experienced unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, sharp sea level rises, dissolving coral reefs, and catastrophic weather events like Sandy.
Like the Nazi's march through Europe, the onslaught 80 years later of global climate change was relentless across the whole world. Back in 2015, we were uncertain how long we could postpone action. Like the Allies ignored the concentration camps of 1933-1939 in Germany, America and Europe ignored the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey for Syrians, and the refugee camps in Africa for displaced persons. Soon, however migrants and refugees began moving within North America. That’s when the USA mobilized, almost too late.
In the 5 years between 2015 and 2020, the US indifference to the civil wars in the Middle East, Africa and Asia was justified by public sentiment. The public just didn’t believe that a climate crisis would happen in America. Recovering from the severe recession of 2008-2010, and years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans turned inward. America seemed secure in the knowledge that thousands of miles of ocean separated us from foreign battlefields. After a decade of economic hardship, citizens were not emotionally prepared for the austerity that war would bring. Then the attack left us no choice.
Prior to 2020, events like the refugees from Syria and hundreds of thousands killed; or Hurricane Sandy deaths and financial damage; or pollution in China causing pre-mature deaths; or aerosols drifting from Asia across the Pacific to the west Coast of America; none of these were sufficient to move Americans to make the sacrifices necessary to curtail global climate change.
Congress did provide some funds necessary to repair the damage from Sandy, but did not call for a national mobilization on the scale last seen when the U.S. entered World War II. Diplomacy by Secretary Kerry was very much the way to deal with holding off disaster approaching from civil wars like Syria, and unstable governments like Iran and North Korea. Appeasement, like 1936-1939, was key the COP21 climate negotiations of 2015. After all, 74 years had passed since Americans were last called upon to sacrifice, and we're not used to to taking extreme steps to protect our selves and our families.
Those were extreme steps America took from 2020 to 2028, but America had gone through something like this before, after we entered World War II. There were extreme hardships but our people adapted and the American economy thrived. We did this again when we viewed global climate change as World War III and mobilized.
A Future Story Based on Foresight
By Richard Turnock
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