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Deep Time

The year 2100 is as far in the future as the year 1940 is far in the past, 80 years in both directions. People still live today who have experienced the ravages of WW II, and people might live in 2100 who have consciously experienced our present. But if you look back at the past 80 years, you will find revolutions both political and technical, historic breaks like the end of the War, the end of the colonial empires and rise of many independent states, the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries and the rise of China,

All these changes happened in the framework of a more or less stable environment. This is now changing rapidly. Wild animal populations have already fallen rapidly all over the world. Pristine forests were replaced by plantations and farms. The current speed of ecological destruction points to a time around 2050 where basically total destruction of natural habitats outside of small protected areas has been completed. At around the same time, climate change will have reached several tipping points leading to unstoppable warming.

The idea of this scenario is not to precisely predict the future, but to show the enormity of change which can be expected by the combination of climate change, natural destruction and ongoing "natural" political evolution and tensions.

Our 2100 scenario starts with state structures which will be very different from today. Like after 1918 and 1989, several waves of separation and breakdown will have torn up dysfunctional states in all parts of the world. The Indian subcontinent will have become a mosaic of unstable states and alliances, with climate refugees from Bangladesh and many other regions of the subcontinent looking for new homes. Core Hindu and Muslim states will still be armed with nuclear weapons, in permanent conflict with more radical religious statelets on one side and eco-communist movements and regions on the other. Like in many other regions worldwide, permanent low level wars with autonomous systems, biological weapons and infrastructure manipulation agents stall any meaningful development, although the region remains one of the more inhabitable ones on the planet.

Europe's political geography will also have changed. Large parts of the Mediterranean countries will have become desert, with refugees from both the southern and the northern coastlines searching refuge in the north. By mid-century, European Union structures, forged into a more centralized and authoritarian system, will have adapted to create a number of new cities to resettle the refugees. Attempts of some Eastern European states to avoid being included in orderly resettlement by leaving the EU will have backfired, resulting in a number of neo-Osmanic statelets being formed in the region after the Mediterranean War. After the bloodshed of this war, a number of regions in Europe will have broken away from the centralized structures and formed a new alliance based on ecological lifestyles and adaptation to the climate crisis, with a network of city states forming the base of the new European Federation in an uneasy stalemate with the old nuclear-armed European Union. Russia and Ukraine will both have suffered an ecologic and agricultural breakdown, with Russia losing control over many regions in the east and south and becoming a Chinese clientele state.

In Africa, many of the old countries will have been wiped away by new more tribally and religiously aligned ones, with super-regional structures and alliances stabilizing the system. Climate stress will have shifted populations, with large parts of the continent basically uninhabitable. In Eastern Africa, some regions will have come under Chinese influence, while central Northern Africa will have fallen prey to a total breakdown of organized government. Masses of refugees will have used the opportunities posed by local crises in other parts of the planet to emigrate.

In South East Asia, climate breakdown will have de-stabilized most states, but basic government structures will still exist under Chinese protection, struggling for survival. The only states in the region who are able to follow an independent path will be those protected by seas and less struck by drought, like Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines. Further south, Australia will have completely changed, a fire stricken continent where agriculture basically will have become impossible. Most of its population will have fled to Tasmania, New Zealand and other parts of the planet by the late 2050's, while the remaining parts of Australia will have come under Chinese influence.

China itself will have re-stabilized after a massive political breakdown in the mid 2040s which started as a rise against corruption and religious suppression. After the war between the PRC and Taiwan which was meant as distraction and ended in a destructive stalemate, a new government will have abolished the supremacy of the Communist Party and created an authoritarian but religiously open state similar to present Singapore. The effects of rising temperatures, sea levels and droughts will have weighted heavily, but the new government will have been able to manage the worst crises, integrate millions of South East Asian refugees and win new settlement areas in a one-sided deal with Russia. With the ideological hurdles a thing of the past, accommodation between the PRC and Taiwan will have taken place, with Taiwan a part of a regional China-dominated alliance also covering the Koreas and Japan.

In South America, extreme regional disparities in climate change will have created migrational stress in most countries. Drought and extreme heat will have made the countries in the north almost uninhabitable, with Brazil having split up in several new states dominated by large cities. The south-eastern countries, led by Argentine, will have united into a federation while the drought stricken impoverished Pacific coast countries have fallen under Chinese dominance. Culturally, the region will be dominated by radical conservative Christians, mostly protestant, stalling intellectual development and preserving a society dominated by ultra rich elites.

Central America will have been basically wiped out by an extreme climate, with both heat, drought and intermittent super storms having made the region uninhabitable. Refugee waves will have dispersed the population of the region over both South and North America, a North America which will have completely changed in the Breakdown of the 2060s.

In North America, the triggers for the Breakdown of the 2060s were both cultural and economic. In a first wave, the economy took a massive hit by the end of local oil reserves and the breakdown in the Arab world. This, together with droughts and floods, also ruined agricultural regions, radicalizing them. The conflicts between conservative regions dominated by White Anglos, liberal regions with an open culture and Latino dominated regions in the south became too strong to be contained by patriotism, and the country split up into four regional alliances. The Central States, conservative and rural, allied themselves with equally conservative central Canadian states, but had to withdraw from their southern parts due to agricultural breakdown and migrational pressure. The Atlantic States formed a federation with some Eastern Canadian states, with Quebec independent but in an alliance. Quebec itself multiplied its population after its decision to accept French refugees who were leaving the drought stricken parts of Southern France in the 2080s. In the south, in an arc from slowly drowning Florida to the south of California, the Estados Unidos de América formed a poverty stricken alliance of states trying to adapt to the hot dry climate, Finally, the Pacific States, covering the Pacific coast from San Francisco to British Columbia, became a powerful economic player in the Pacific region.

Addendum - 2020.04.14

This text has been written in late 2019. It will be published unchanged for the time being, with the current Corona crisis requiring the analyst team to focus on the present issues.