Hello everybody, I found this text on "Terra Enomica", it explains in a good realism our future condition on Earth...

I hope the translation between french and english is good...


Earth, year 2043

This fiction is based on scientific studies, reports/ratios of insurance companies, discussions with specialists in the climatic change. The approach does not consist in blackening the feature but proposing a sequence of possible facts starting from a real situation: the climatic change is moving. If the mobilization around this question remains timid, a frank reaction of the international community is not excluded and can make it possible to contain the effects of the climatic change.

London, The United Kingdom. December 23 "... pleasant temperature today... We have 10 degrees this morning and the thermometer will post 16 degrees in the shade in the afternoon... Immediately, the 7 hours information... ". Sara is with flock, like each morning.


"Please present your chart", nasille Nestor, with the entry of the shower cubicle. Nestor, it is the nickname whose Sara affublé the voice which rate/rhythm its daily newspaper: in fact, a computer with voice synthesis which permanently controls the level of gas emissions for purpose of greenhouse - one calls them "the gases" - apartment of Sara, vain 25 square meters perched with the 25e stage of a tower which counts 40 of them.

One euro = water glass (one euro is 1.31374 USD)

The principle is simple: some acts of the everyday life of Sara are regarded as neutrals, because they call upon the energy of the photovoltaic power station of the building, considered "nontransmitting of gas", or with the system of recycling of water. Thus, to consume up to 20 liters of cold or tepid water per day, to light television 1 hour per day, to heat the parts with 16 degrees the night. Beyond these levels, it is considered that Sara exceeds its quota. It must then use its chart CCU (universal Chart carbon), on which Nestor outputs each time a few units: 50 units for one minute of hot water, 200 units for one night of heating to 19 degrees, 25 units for one hour of additional television. 10 units for water glass of the tap. Regularly, Sara must pay to reload its credit card: 10 centimes the unit.

The idea of this scale goes back to Mathusalem. It was imposed by the European Parliament in 2019 and was developed, good liking badly liking, by the residents of Tower 34, then by those of others turns, other districts, other cities, after several months of rough discussions.

Full powers in the European Parliament

Because after the "events of the summer 2017", there was not any more the choice. Europeans had taken the practice of waves of heat waves. But in July and August 2017, 200.000 of them left the life there, of Portugal in Bulgaria, Greece in Denmark. When, with the autumn 2017, a new episode of pouring rain and floods struck the center of Europe, national governments taken of panic vis-a-vis to the vagueness of demonstrations caused by the accumulation of the climatic risks.

After years of inertia, after the failure of the international negotiations for the third shutter of the protocol of Kyoto (2015), the Old continent claimed a vigorous action on behalf of the elected officials. This one was not made wait... Paralysed by the stake, the totality of the European national parliaments gave their mandate and their full powerss to the European Parliament. One tended period, during which the attempts at nationalist fold re-appeared. With what good? There could be solution only total.


To optimize the lives

At the beginning of 2019, after one year of climatic general states, the assembly of the European Union plancha on a "universal level of reduction of the emissions", the PURE one, immediately renamed the "plan" by its detractors. With PURE, the painful decisions started to rain. Each fact, each gesture, from each one - particular, company, community - would have screened of "the gas" emissions. The lives had "to be optimized". The keystone of the building would be an individual chart making it possible to deduct and tax the gestures with the daily newspaper, transmitters of gas for purpose of greenhouse. To circulate in the gasoline car? Taxed. To dine at the restaurant? Taxed. To consume with the supermarket? Taxed, always.

The tax on gases invades the lives, even most miserable. Not to reinflate the cases of the States, but to dissuade the "polluting" behaviors more. Twenty-five years later, the system functions. With wrong or rightly, nobody any more sees there to repeat. Historians even baptized the years 2019 and following the "10 last": ten years of the last chance to contain the climatic drift
.

The residents of Tower 34 do not escape, therefore, with the rule. According to the scale established by the PURE annual one and set up by the London department of decentralized planning, the building where saw Sara cannot emit more than 1000 tons of gas for purpose of greenhouse this year. And its inhabitants are held to negotiate a balanced compromise together, within this "quota". Example: in winter, the power station of the elevator is decontaminated at the peak hours. The photovoltaic panels of Tower 34 do not provide electricity in quantity sufficient for the building. The residents had to choose: tepid shower or elevators. Nobody not having planned to give up the comfort of tepid water in apartments "heated" with 16 degrees, Sara thus descends daily the 25 stages which separate its apartment from the street, with foot. 512 steps. 15 minutes of descent.

An elevator every 15 minutes

Sara should escape this evening from the climbing with foot. Civil servant with the service food of the municipal department of decentralized planning, it seldom regains his apartment before 9 p.m.. The halls of the tower are, then, about deserts and the ballet of the elevators can begin again quietly: a departure every fifteen minutes, on average. This evening, Sara will return the arms charged with vegetables of season. It will pass to "the Pakistani", the grocer of its tower. Like one Tuesday out of two, it touched its notebook of food tickets yesterday. A ration of 200 grams biological vegetables per day, in direct source of the gardens of the south of the city.

By leaving Tower 34, one of the hundred turns (re)construites on pile - whims of the Thames oblige -, Sara thinks of its family, remained in Marseilles, which it has not re-examined for five years. The meeting again will not be for this year. There is beautiful lurette that the planes do not fly any more to Europe. Under the pressure of industries and rare road conveyors still in exercise on the continent, air transport was put at the dock for his incapacity to reduce its gas emissions significantly. Struck by "the" tax, the airline companies went bankrupt the ones after the others: the price of a ticket Geneva-New York had leaped from 300 to 2000 euros. The European Union put the hand on the last cuckoos in operating state, to assign them to the emergency services and the armies...

To go to Marseilles, Sara will not be able to even take the train. Constantly saturated, it is out of price at this season of the year: 1000 euros the return ticket. In any event, the holidays of Sara come to be cancelled: a parasite touched the gardens of the East. The harvest of 500 hectares kitchen gardens and orchards is lost for this year. It will be necessary to reallocate the employees and to find new sources of provisioning for the districts Is Like two years ago, the districts North will perceive a ration a little more scanty for one month, then it will be the turn of the inhabitants of the East and the South, then again those of the West. So on until the end of the year 2044. This time still, the business should pass without too many demonstrations, hopes for Sara.

It is the price to pay for an agriculture 100% biological. Because the use of manures was proscribed - their manufacture required too much energy - and that of the pesticides is fixed quotas for. Armies of farm labourers and agricultural engineers were assigned to the fields, so much the task is complex: it is necessary to monitor permanently all the indicators, the evolution of the parasites. And when one of them proliferates, it is the swing-low of combat.


Agriculture is also a reason for concern for Amplema. With 5000 kilometers of London, from his hut fixed on cliff of Bandiagara, the chief of the village of Banani (Mali) sweeps glance this ground ochre where nothing any more pushes. The formerly green valley during the rain season left the place, here is a score of years, with a runway. Since, water always comes from the sky, but it does not arrive any more but on board containers than the cargo liners of the United Nations charter once per month. Just what to survive and raise some weak vegetables.

Aimed (visa) of climatic refugee

Of the people dogon, there remains only a one small thousand of representatives. Pushed by the dryness and its batch of famines and epidemics, the majority of the villagers took the road of north: Mopti, Tombouctou, Mauritania. Most courageous launched out in family, with foot or à.dos.de mule, in a tour of several years towards Morocco and Europe. Others threw their reserved on the south, more accessible: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia. Whatever their destination, Amplema know, these exiled it do not find at the end of their road, if they reach that point, that one of the innumerable refugee camps planted at the borders of Europe. In these towns of fabric in prey to violences and the disease, they wander in search of an improbable visa of climatic refugee.

In this end of the year 2043, Office of the High Commission with refugees (HCR) counts nearly 100 million refugees in the camps disseminated on planet. In the north of the African continent, they collect exiled of sub-Saharan Africa fleeing the furnace, and the residents of the Nile driven out by the floods. In Asia, the famine which strikes what it remains grounds of Bangladesh, poisoned by the incursions saltworks of the Indian Ocean, it also threw on the roads of the million refugees.

More in north, they are the Chinese who flee the Gobi Desert, in search of a new life in Russia. A lure in fact: the proliferation of the parasites there ruins the cultures and involves the multiplication of the epidemics. So that the Russians they also take the tangent towards the West. But when one is Russian, one does not enter any more to Europe. One stops with the crossing of Bielorussia, Poland and Lithuania. And one piles up, there still, in Hrodna, in a camp of 500.000 hearts planted to a score of kilometers of the curtain of iron and his watchtowers
.

fresh season

Reynald knows Hrodna well. It achieved its obligatory non-military national service there. One year of shipwreck in contact with damnés of the climate, it was in 2030. It was also its large last "travels". Today it runs ordinary days on the basin of Arcachon, where him and Anne hold a hut with chips, open from February to June and September to December, to stick to the calendar school holidays, from now on fixed over the "fresh season". The tourists - primarily of the regional ones - unload at regular rate/rhythm. The majority rent for a few days a compressed-air vehicle builds locally starting from recycled materials. Their manufacture requires much less energy than the antédiluviennes cars with gasoline or with hydrogen, the price "a little less" is taxed and their use is democratized.

However, the escapades remain rare for the populations which massively left the campaigns. As of the years 2010, the blaze of the prices of the gasoline and fuel returned the life out of price there. As for the succession of the storms and floods, it exploded the amount of the premiums of insurance. In 2015, the stop constrained and forced of a nuclear thermal power station on two - for lack of water to cool them - made leap the price of electricity, in spite of the blossoming of a myriad of small companies which invested the alternative energy sector. Assessment: transport, electricity and insurances burdened 40% with the rural household budget. Intolerable. Constrained with the exodus, these néo-urban piled up in turns of 50 stages, built for their effectiveness: more concentrated, the population moves less and consumes less energy.

Tax on the birth

Reynald and Anne refuse there. The days of wind, the wind mill planted on their small holding provides energy for some detergents, a reserve of hot water temporary. And then, for tourism, Arcachon it is always better than Marseilles in summer. The Riviera is nothing any more but one chain of phantom cities, crushed by a blazing sun. More the least forest at the horizon: they left in smoke. The real market broke down, just like in the stations of mountain which did not see snow any more - nor the tourists who went with - for a long time.

Reynald made its accounts: the season was not bad. It put money on side. And it has just learned that the European Parliament thinks of removing the tax on the births. With Anne, they consider a first child. A way, for them, to show their confidence in the future. The years of hyperinflation and unemployment are far behind, the social climate slackened. And OMC, the world Organization of the climate, have just announced that, for the first time for two centuries, the gas concentration for purpose of greenhouse in the atmosphere has been stabilized.

blue sky ?

Even on the American continent, the situation calms down. The North-American Confederation has just signed a pact of nonaggression with the States Libres of Florida and Texas. Forgotten, years of lawsuits which led the persons in charge for oil industry and the car in the dock, under the pressure of ONG and lawyers driven by the lure of gain. Forgotten, bankruptcies in cascade of the car manufacturers.

Of return to the 25e stage of Tower 34, Sara enjoys a cold soup in front of documentary of the BBC devoted to the first protocol of Kyoto. One learns there that in 2003, a report/ratio warned the American administration of the risks of economic destabilization, social and policy related to the climatic change. Randall and Marshall, the authors of the text, had concluded with the possibility of a Siberian climate in Great Britain and a nuclear risk of chaos in the world.

Sara outlines a smile. For those which have the means of taking the train, Great Britain became the last word in moderate tourism. As for the conflicts, they are confined well beyond the European iron curtain. "These forecasters, which band of birds of ill omen!"

Walter Bouvais de Terra Economica

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