In Margaret Atwood’s powerful essay [It’s Not Climate Change It’s Everything Change] on the reality of climate change and its implications for the future of oil-dependent industrial civilization she tells two vastly distinct stories of our future.
The first is a tale of dystopia – a future so bleak, it would make Hollywood moguls looking for the next science fiction blockbuster of action-packed (post)apocalypse salivate with anticipation. Here, Atwood tells a story of human failure: of short-sighted choices based on fatal addiction to business-as-usual, and an egoistic hubris rooted in centuries of globalisation.
In this scenario, we largely ignore the overwhelming evidence of climate change, and the result is that industrial civilization enters a period of protracted collapse, fuelled by accelerating war, famine, and natural disasters.