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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
New Statesman author Eleanor Penny believes she has worked out why rich people don’t appear to care about the imminent climate catastrophe.
Who gets to survive climate change?
19 March 2019
As the waters rise, the rich are readying their arks to escape oncoming environmental crisis.
In November, as wildfires ripped through California, Kim Kardashian hired a squad of private firefighters to protect her $50m estate in Calabasas. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Blackwater security guardsdefended the houses of the hyper rich against feared hordes of looters while their occupants were quietly helicoptered to safety.
Elsewhere, the hyper rich make plans to flee the planet altogether. From Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme to the would-be citizens of space-based micro nation Asgardia, venture capitalist space exploration is being packaged as humanity’s pioneering attempt to save itself from destruction.
These are not anomalies. Private insurance companies like AIG and Chubb have boasted about their increased provisions against the rapidly increasing numbers of natural disasters like wildfires. Others are scrambling to offset their exposureto the gathering effects of climate chaos. As the waters rise, the rich are readying their arks – quietly preparing themselves for climate chaos. If history teaches us anything, it’s that elites build their castles high above the filth.
…
At its root, elite denial isn’t a result of ignorance or suspended disbelief. Concentrated wealth warps perceptions of crisis and immunises elites against the practical and psychological threats of catastrophe. They are convinced of their own ability to survive the apocalypse: cataclysm is a preoccupation of the poor.
…
Read more: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/03/who-gets-survive-climate-change
My first thought was to make some wisecrack about hoping Anthony saves me a seat on the final evacuation mission to Asgardia, but I’m worried climate activists might take my joke seriously.
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I laugh at silly notions that leaving the planet to populate Mars or the moon would be a viable choice. Why not try living in central Antarctica, where at least there is plenty of water and oxygen… There solved a whole plethora of obstacles…
Antarctica? Let’s see them try a go at living in the Yukon for fun and games. It should be geeting warmer there shortly according to them.
One potential way to ensure that scenario doesn’t come to pass is to legislate any Earth Based business ownership requires terrestrial residency. If Musk goes to Mars, he gives up ownership of Tesla and Space-X. If the ultra Rich move to space stations, they give up terrestrial based business ownership rights.
yeah right…
and while your at it why not force all business to be owned and operated only by residents of the country in which the business exists.
…hmm that causes a bit of a conundrum with multinational corporations where must the owners live?
BTW which country’s laws are you planing on using? United Nations? (snicker)
Live anyplace…on planet
IF what you demand is good, then extending it to the country level must be better.
Unless your goal is to steal what others have built.
The idea of alarmists leaving the planet is basically sound. Let’s speed up the process. They can use some tax dollars of mine, instead of killing birds and bats by windmills.
Rocketscientist: BTW which country’s laws are you planing on using? United Nations? (snicker)
Bryan A: Live anyplace…on planet
Bryan you didn’t answer the question – which country’s laws are you planning on using for this idea (which ultimately means which country are you planning on for enforcing this law). If Germany (or even the EU) passes such a law, that’s fine and dandy for confiscating the wealth of Germans (or Europeans) who decide to live in space, but that will do nothing against Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Australians, etc who do so. (and that’s assuming you could ever get such a law passed).
Actually, there are (or at least used to be) countries that did this. They permitted you to leave the country. But you had to leave all of your wealth behind. You could take the clothes you were wearing, and that was about it.
At the time, we called those countries dictatorships that had no respect for human rights. And most of us condemned those countries.
should be some nice properties available for pennies on the dollar … can’t wait …
If Musk goes to Mars, he is dead.
There, fixed it for you.
IF I were to take you seriously, I would point out that the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits such a practice. But since we all know you’re joking, I never said anything.
You assume the law he wants cares about little things like the constitution of one particular country. For his “idea” to work, he’d need a world-wide law, otherwise these rich people would simply relocate their businesses headquarters to whatever country doesn’t have said law before launching themselves into their space utopia.
There are locals in Central Russia that are more remote, less inhabited than Alaska or northern Canada and much more hospitable than Antarctica.
I watched an interesting video a few months ago. It is about a woman named Agafia. She lives alone in the wilderness of Siberia, and has for the last 40+ years. Talk about the strength of the human spirit. This is worth watching. … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFK3DJ7Kn6s
I heard that in a Russian peninsula called Yamal trees are growing faster due to climate change.
During the Holocene’s “Climate Optimum”, trees were growing all across northern Russia, close to the shore of the Artic Ocean. Read more @ur momisugly http://www.dandebat.dk/eng-klima7.htm
Samuel
I am hoping you meant “locales”, not “locals”.
Crispin,
You wondered correctly, ….. my RA afflicted fingers are a constant cause of my mis-keying and mis-spelling and my MS-Word “spellcheck” doesn’t always catch said mistakes.
I am just 7 months into my 79th trip around the Sun and its been a long exciting journey …… and I don’t fret the small stuff too much, only my mistakes or errors involving science really irritate me.
“Why not try living in central Antarctica, where at least there is plenty of water and oxygen”
People probably would be, if international law didn’t prohibit them from doing so.
But it’s not that useful, because the real reason for moving into space is to pull millions of miles between the sane people and the asshats. Antarctica is just a short flight away.
Living in Antarctica, assuming that was allowed, would be great practice for Mars or any other place off the planet earth. While there is water and oxygen, which would probably not be true off planet, it’s cold, inhospitable, and they could learn to live with severe claustrophobia, etc, like will occur living on Mars. They could practice bringing in materials one “spaceship” at a time, building the buildings, etc all in preparation for their new lives. Yes, I know THEY won’t build the buildings, but think of the jobs they could create. About the time their great-great-great grandchildren are born, the new utopia in Antarctica will be ready. The earth will still be fine and there won’t be any reason to live there, but hey, they will have “won” the whole climate change battle, right? They have their own compound in Antarctica. Everyone else has beaches in Miami and skiing in Aspen. But they WON. Rich people are creepy weird, you know that?
Living on Mars would be like living in Yellowknife without the lake and without the summer and without the mosquitoes so thick they move in clouds that darken the sun, followed by blackflies so thick they move in clouds that darken the sun, followed by winter.
Watch “Ice Road Truckers” for a while and consider life like that without the vehicles, fuel and assistance within radio contact. Oh, and no stuff on the trucks either.
They may be hyper wealthy but they are not all that bright or well informed. It’s laughable.
We Aussies are laughing ourselves silly right now, with our newest (and wealthiest) Greens candidate for the forthcoming Federal election in May. Julian Burnside, a wealthy philanthropist barrister, has chosen to challenge our Federal Treasurer for the blue ribbon conservative seat of Kooyong. Climate change, of course, is the current mantra and the topic for a public pre-election panel discussion.
Burnside has brought laughter on himself by giving the instruction “Don’t interrupt!” to a female conservative Senator during a panel discussion on Sky News. I expect that video clip will soon appear in campaign ads, and Burnside may wonder why people find it funny.
If they aren’t that smart, how did they get so wealthy in the first place?
Their Daddy (or Grand Daddy or so on) was smart. Or at least that’s how the left dismiss all the rich as having undeservedly inherited their wealth. The fact is many rich people (at least here in the states) are first generation rich, having come up with a marketable idea and successfully built a business around it through long hours and hard work. The myth that all the rich were trust fund babies is just that, a myth.
That’s no to say there aren’t any inherited wealth rich, because there are. Lots of those as well. However, the ones that “aren’t that smart” are the ones end up being the last generation rich as they uselessly fritter away the wealth that their parents left them.
I frequently hear, even from my wife who is typically very conservative, that the only way anyone can get rich is by having no morals or conscience, and cheating everyone else out of their money. That’s not to say I like or even respect Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or even Mark Zuckerberg (while I feel for his former roommate, who may have even come up with the first workable FB, it was MZ that had the drive and determination to turn it into reality, not the hapless roommate) and the list goes on and on, but they didn’t get rich by sitting on their hands and bemoaning how “unfair” the world is! It took a lot of hard work to get each and every one of those companies to where it is today. That’s another misconception us poor conservatives must overcome!!!
Not to mention that 3/4 of the Earth is still open and available if you’re willing to go the SeaLab 2021 route. Technical challenges, sure, but nearly as many as going to Mars.
Living on Mars is much easier than living in the deep ocean.
At least in the deep ocean, you aren’t more than a few miles from fresh air if needed.
I doubt very much if humans will be living at those depths.
I have designed both spacecraft and submarines. The submarines environment is by far more challenging than space. For space habitation the biggest pressure differential is 15 psi. Just descending 33 feet in the ocean exceeds that differential, and it only gets worse as you descend. And, the pressure load is compressive which makes pressure vessels that much more unstable. Then there is the corrosion. Sea water isn’t very nice to minerals and metals in that it dissolves them. Vacuum …not so much, but it is not without its quirks. Low pressures and low gravity will allow some metals to recrystallize and grow whiskers. Thermal control in the ocean is quite different from space as well. While deep space is a cold as you can get (-273 °C ) the only heat loss is through radiation. More often than not the issue with space craft is adequate heat rejection due to electronic equipment heat generation. Using the readily available heat sink of ocean water alleviates this and then some. The coldest the oceans get is about 2 °C, however keeping underwater habitats above the surrounding water temperatures requires a good bit of design not easily accomplished without significant insulation as the surrounding water in also convecting away a good bit of heat.
Both realms challenge the need for life support.
I doubt very much if humans will be living at those depths.
The same could be said of living on mars. The challenges are different for each, but they are considerable. As such the one closer to home has the better shot at being overcome first if for no other reason than you can try and fail dozens of times here on earth in the amount of time it would take one attempt on Mars to even get started on the red planet (due to the great distances of space one need to traverse just to get people and materials from here to there – Each failure on Mars means repeating that long time with sending the next group of people and materials not to mention the difficulty in remotely recovering information on why the previous effort failed, which would be needed to avoid the same failures being repeated).
If your submersible has a malfunction and it can’t facilitate egress to the surface, the fresh air may as well be a billion miles away. Quite a few submariners have been killed this way.
— EM1/SS, crew person on an SSN.
If your submersible has a malfunction and it can’t facilitate egress to the surface, the fresh air may as well be a billion miles away. Quite a few submariners have been killed this way.
True, but if your first submarine malfunctions, you can recover the wreck and analyze the data in order for your second submarine to have a better shot at avoiding that same malfunction. If your first space craft malfunctions and ends up on one-way deep space voyage never to return you don’t have much to go on in order to try and make sure your second space craft doesn’t suffer the same fate. (it’s hard to fix a problem when you don’t know what caused the problem)
While the crews of the two “first” crafts will be equally dead, it’s the crews of the second, and successive crafts whose survival depends on finding out what went wrong the first time.
(thinks…)
I guess so. Mars wouldn’t have a brutal crushing pressure to worry about for instance.
On the other hand, getting to the deep ocean is probably a lot easier than Mars. Hold this heavy weight and step off the boat, please…
Probably best to summarise as Mars has ‘different’ technical issues c.f. Deep Ocean.
Living on Mars is much easier than living in the deep ocean.
For the sake of argument, we’ll say that is true (it’s debatable as the “difficulties” are different on Mars, not absent, and every bit as challenging). Even so, getting to Mars is a longer and tougher task than getting to the deep ocean. And, with the deep ocean, if and emergency happens (you get majorly sick or injured, for example) you aren’t far from the resources you need to mitigate that emergency (specialist hospitals/doctors are only minutes to hours away). On Mars you are S.O.L as any resources not to hand are months away back on Planet Earth.
The world can do without people such as account executives, telephone sanitizers, public relations executives and opinion pollsters. 🙂
So it’s the “B” ark for them then.
James Bull
What about 97% of climate scientists. Shouldn’t they be packing their bags too?
Reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Personally I am very willing to contribute to a fund to ensure those most precious souls who populate Hollywood, the media and the academia who have selflessly warned us over and over about the end of times, are among the first to be evacuated to space along with the essential telephone sanitizers and life consultants.
If you set it up, I’ll bet you could get them to show up.
Build it and they will come. Then fire them off into the heavens.
And the lawyers, Andy, they can have the all lawyers join them so that when the realize what a mess their misguided beliefs have landed them in, the can sue the heck out of each other.
OK, some of the above “the”s should have been “they”s. Not sure if it’s my fingers skipping letters, my keyboard having a fuss “Y” key or auto-corrupt acting up (or some combination of all of the above). Whatever the case, It makes me miss that edit button every time something like that happens.
That’s the thing – you CAN’T laugh at it anymore – besides the fact that there isn’t a progressive warmist on the planet with a sense of humor, there’s the accompanying fact that there is no absurdity that’s beneath them.
Hadn’t thought of your argument before, but it amazes me when people say with a strait face we need to move some place other than Earth. Ignoring the stupidity of thinking a cave on Mars can be a better place to live than earth, my fear is that the middle class will be wiped out to pay for it. As a little boy, I assumed we would be on our way to Mars shortly after landing on the moon. 50 years later, I’m adamantly opposed to human space exploration. Using my money to fund joyrides for rich folks offends me greatly. I’m all for robotic exploration, and big telescopes. None of these will directly benefit me either, but at least the knowledge gained is interesting. I want to know if there are tube worms living on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn today. Seriously, I find the idea far more fascinating than searching for dead microbes on Mars.
Back in the 1600’s, I could see an awful lot of people saying that same thing regarding leaving Europe.
Using my money to fund joyrides for rich folks offends me greatly
If we ever do leave this rock for another one, why do you think it’ll be the rich folks who will go first. When the “new world” on the other side of the Atlantic was first colonized, it was mostly the lower classes and those seeking to escape persecution for their religious beliefs who were the first colonists. Do you really think the Pilgrims were the ultra wealthy of their time? The early settlers didn’t even have a money economy, instead relying on corn (valued at 6 shillings a bushel) as the currency of exchange.
similarly, the first Martian colonists will likely be made up mostly of the poor and outcast who have nothing to lose by leaving the Earth. Maybe an idle rich dilatant or two that hadn’t entirely thought things through will be in the mix, but they’ll be the exception not the rule.
Is Anthony rich?
Of course. Gobs of Big Oil money paid to run this site and to fake all of the articles and comments. I think he already owns a spaceship. How do you think he can afford all of those Bigfoot steaks? By pawning his moon rock collection? Not likely.
We’re all in the pay of Big Oil.
If Anthony’s rich, it’s news to me. And, if so, he conned me out of money to help pay for a couple of conference trips
Ha . . .
and me a few seemingly unnecessary small donations.
What a scandal!!
Wasn’t that Karl Marx’s explanation for why American workers did not support communism — they had achieved middle class living standards.
Everyone knows that the real conspiracy will send Penny and similar ilk to Mars with Elon Musk so that he is always guaranteed to be the smartest in the room. Ooops!
I hope they’re taking Alexandria Occasional Cortex with them, or they’ll be missing the village idiot.
The barbarians will storm the gates long before the uber wealthy will be allowed to jet off and leave us paupers behind.
Somehow I am reminded of the French Revolution. Indeed, many French aristocrats were able to escape but most were unable to take their wealth.
If the super rich flee to Mars, my guess is that they will quickly be cut off from their wealth.
They’ll be cut off from pretty much everything terrestrial, for years on end at best. If they didn’t already send it or bring it with them they won’t have it. Presently there’s no flotilla of supply vessels.
There aren’t return boats sailing on every high tide.
BTW the ultra rich didn’t go to the new world, those who went were “lean and hungry” peasants eager to make their fortunes.
Yes, exactly. Few of the ‘ultra rich’ are ready to live a spartan life on Mars.
The people who will go are the middle class, who see the chance to get away from the thieving leftists and start a good life somewhere new.
Which is exactly why the left are so terrified.
As for ‘only things they take with them’, by the time we can live on Mars, we’ll have local manufacturing technology that can make most things we want wherever there are the resources to do so.
They’ll be cut off from pretty much everything terrestrial, for years on end at best.
Certainly for the length of time it takes for “things terrestrial” to travel from one planet to the other.
Presently there’s no flotilla of supply vessels.
Because, presently, there’s nothing to supply. Just as there were no flotilla of trading vessels crossing the atlantic in the centuries before the colonies were started. But once there’s a viable colony established, such vessels will be inevitable (again, as seen though out history).
There aren’t return boats sailing on every high tide.
Again, see above. Now granted, returning space ships are a bit of a bigger logistical hurdle than returning boats were back in the colonial days of the New World. But once a viable colony exists, the ability to have travel in both direction will follow. (the trick, of course, is getting to the viable colony stage which is a whole lot harder than the phrase implies).
And on “Downton Abbey” we saw some Russian aristocrats who escaped the communist revolution to Britain, but again they were no longer wealthy.
We should be so lucky.
I will hold the door for them. Will make more room for normal people.
If they move smartly, the door won’t hit them where the good lord split them.
I don’t think this was thought thru,Without an army of subservants,the rich are going nowhere!
The sooner these people leave for Mars or elsewhere, the better off and safer we will be.
Great idea….kind of reminds me of all the rich people who were on the Titanic.
We should encourage all the Alarmists to flee to Asgardia as soon as possible.
It isn’t just this story, but headlines all over the place read like a crazy science fiction story.
Has humanity always been so nuts, or is there some sort of epidemic of madness?
Clearly, it is a result of climate change, or perhaps breathing too much CO2. (sarc).
I blame in the Internet. It’s allowing all those with room-temperature IQs to band together and promote each others absurd ideas.
And they have more votes than we do.
The bottom half of the bell curve needs love, too.
Sure they do… And they plan to wait on themselves to build housing, grow crops, raise animals, clean up personal filth and all of that rot.
Which means they have to bring along fairly large communities of doers, tradespeople, farmers, etc.
Or do these non-achievers plan to develop food replicators and warp drive within the next twelve years?
Just another unicorn fantasy of the progressive left.
Good point, ATheoK. The rich will need someone to send back down to Earth for more toilet paper when they run out on Mars.
Oh, and pick up another case of Scotch… and a Mocha latte grande… and nachos… and a few bottles of Perrier on the way out the door… and…
.
.
You’re right. There’s gonna be a lot of ugliness and misery for those who are used to the soft life of the ultra rich.
I already saw this movie. 2012.
Yes but you didn’t realise it was a documentary… 😉
Thought that was Elysium
It was a book wasn’t it? One of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels I think. But as I recall it was a bunch of hairdressers and bureaucrats that were convinced to be the vanguard sent to colonize a new planet. But hey, first tragedy, then farce and all that.
That was the “B” Ark if memory serves.
Golgafrincham B-Ark.
The plot was that the planet decided that they had a ‘useless third’ of the population and they spun a story of ‘DOOOOOM!!!!’ in order to convince that third to leave.
They ‘divided’ the population into the A-Ark (all the thinkers, leaders, scientists and artists) and the C-Ark (the people who do the work) and then convinced everyone else to get into the B-Ark.
What readers (viewers/listeners… your version may vary) normally take out of this is that many of the population do useless jobs that add nothing to society. Middle managers, telephone sanitisers, used car salesmen – all add nothing and should be buddled up and removed. The B-Ark. Short hand for useless.
What people forget about this story is the casual punch line that the remaining Golgafrinchams were all wiped out by a disease contracted from a dirty telephone, ie, all those thinkers, scientists and great leaders weren’t actually all that smart either.
My take has been if they had sent off the A-Ark the B and Cs would have been MUCH better off. Never trust your Elites.
she’s a kid >
Eleanor Penny
Henny Penny
Coincidence?
Nah, just born again.
Penny Robinson.
There is a better solution! The rich could simply subsidize the building of nuclear power generators to replace coal-fired plants in China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia. They could all be operating long before the 12-year doomsday arrives and an RCP2.6 (or better) scenario will result. GMST will never reach 1.5°C let alone 2°C.
It won’t cost much – just the difference between the c/kWh for nuclear, rather than coal. MUCH cheaper than flying to Mars! Or would they all rather abandon the Earth than risk a nuclear accident? Has anybody done the math?
Even cheaper is MIT’s new proposal for aerosols in the stratosphere. Only $2 billion per year.
Presumably the poor people to do all the cooking, cleaning and other essntial jobs will be shuttled in daily from earth.
Women will return to Venus., men to Mars, and babies will be launched into orbit around Pluto, the clump of minerals formerly deemed a planet.
Why am I suddenly reminded of the ‘Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B’?
Maybe that picture of a kardashian?
“They are convinced of their own ability to survive the apocalypse: cataclysm is a preoccupation of the poor. ”
Cataclysm is a preoccupation of the mentally unwell. Fixed it.
Right. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is off by a few hundred PPM from some notion of the ideal, so the rich plan to hazard a long space journey to some unknown planet with an atmosphere of methane and cyanide, with no life or food to be found. Good grief.
The author isn’t stupid enough to believe it, but he thinks his readership might be.
some notion of the ideal…
New Statesman: The influence might not be positive, but there’s no doubt he has shaped the debate.
new statesman not sure if this is good or badhttps://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2010/09/climate-mcintyre-keeper
If Kim Kardashian is going to be on the one-and-only space station life boat, as the article’s picture suggests, I’ll take my chances right here on Mother Earth come what may.
++ Agree ++
Please, let’s make sure AOC has a reservation on the first ship to Mars.
Anyone writing for The Onion must have quite a problem, as the left is approaching a parody of itself in reality.
Indeed Anthony’s First of April post will have to be honest and truthful. There’s no way you can parody stupid.
Meanwhile the Planet continues to cool towards a Maunder Minimum.
Ironic does not cover it.
I keep hoping they’ll move to another planet and take all their psycophants with them. (Misspelling intentional.) Now someone else has put it into words where they can see it. ‘Bout time, too.
I’ll make sure I stock the supplies of everything. I have plans for a icehouse, since refrigeration won’t be available any more. But I’ll need an icebox to cool stuff, and I still have my great-great grandmother’s oil lamps. They only need new wicks and make a glass “skirt”, which I think I can pick up at a store that serves the Amish communities. Thank goodness I had the foresight to get Hannah Glass’s classic ‘Art of Cookery’, originally published in 1787.
And the times, they are a-changing….
Well, it all looks good to me.
No need to worry about lamp supplies. Try Antique Lamp Supply in TN:
https://www.antiquelampsupply.com/
They sell glass skirt lampshades, too. And chimneys and wicks.
Thanks Neil, really useful link source. I’ve already got some Victorian oil lamps laid in for when the power cuts start in the U.K. , probably the next severe winter we get. Incidentally I see they supply the incandescent mantle type lamps. My understanding is that these need to be used with caution unless you like breathing in alpha particles.
Sara: How do you write science fiction with this kind of “reality” existing? Do you write what was “normal” as science ficiton now?
(Note: I do the same with planning ahead. We keep six months to a year of food and other supplies, 3 months of medicines. I’d do more if they lasted longer. Still working on how to make my own insulin, but if some guy did it in the early 1900’s I’m sure I can do so too. We can live 100% off grid right now, though I won’t if I have a choice. For an icebox, underground storage will work in the cooler locations. I use buried coolers in fall to save garden produce until I can get around to processing it. As a friend and I discuss, we grew up or had parents who lived like this. Today’s kids are in deep kimchi when their cell phones die and their social networks evaporate….)
Good question, Sheri. I was out most of the day, not ignoring what you asked.
Sci-fi used to be speculation on what was to come, partly based on what the growing span of science provided. Then there was a shift in something, some part of it, that gave it a case of the dismals, and it became speculation on dystopia, rather than utopia. I don’t know if that started with Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, or with some of Heinlein’s stories that indicated a societal breakdown was underway, or if it had anything to do with the then current events.
However, if you look back into history, it seems as though every time things get tough (bad weather, crop failures, plagues of bugs, weird diseases) , people find themselves wanting to get up and leave for less unpleasant places. It may be a huge natural disaster like the quake and tidal waves that hit the city of Ur, or it might be Noah’s flood or the asteroid that hit Gomorrah.
But subsequent to that, you have dystopic civilizations falling apart in ‘1984’, Fahrenheit 451, ‘Brave New World, the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt (they were monotheistic and refused to return to polytheism), Heinlein’s ‘Revolt in 2100’, the ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘Divergent’ series, and – yes – the Terminator stuff as well as Star Wars and Star Trek.
So if you look at this pattern which seems to repeat itself in history and in literature and entertainment, then it’s easy enough to set up a story line to follow that will allow the characters to succeed escaping and starting over while the “old system” (for want of anything better) crumbles away. If I have a story that is about love and loss in a time of warfare, that could be at any time in history on this planet, and therefore makes it easy to move ahead in time to the speculative future.
But then you have to ask questions such as: “if I do XX with these characters, will that destroy future alliances that bring this to an end?” or “Is it really necessary to let any of the main characters live?”
It’s also about realizing that there are only XX themes in writing fiction, and the tenor of a story is set by the genre it inhabits.
Thank you for explaining.
The propagandists have sadly been very successful in convincing the idiot masses, and themselves, that every normal weather event is another sign of imminent Armageddon. It’s really quite sad. I don’t see this nonsense ending for a very long time. Even a 10 year cold spell will be spun as an effect of climate change.