We built on top of the past, ruined by floods and storms and riots, but in many places it shows through. It’s like the science fiction films from the beginning of the century, where glittering skyscrapers sit beside rundown waste. Although the skyscrapers only glitter in the movies. Auckland’s problems are much like they were in those times too, growing out faster than up, and still groaning under a population hungry for space.
The climate changed, just like the experts said it would for decades. We dismissed Kyoto, we failed in Copenhagen, we even ignored Paris. Despite the turning of the political tide once storms displaced more people than any war ever had, we were too late. Just like the experts said.
Other nearby planets shine a little bit brighter than in the past, with lights, of our creation, shining back home across the emtiness. Except of course, the Earth is not home for everyone anymore. The question for them is: how do they not make the same mistakes we did? Do they have the right to terraform a whole planet, especially after we’ve proven our own atmosphere is so fragile? Will they listen to each other, and avoid the wrongs our ancestors made when they were the colonisers?
We haven’t found other life, not that we never really expected to, but we have found that we were more alien to ourselves than we ever thought. We’ve discovered as much about ourselves as we have about the worlds around us, about human endurance, ingenuity, and how willingly we accept others worse off than ourselves.
Sunlight filters down through the haze an pollution, the space junk and solar shaders, as if we live in a perpetual sunset.
Our engineers and architects are no longer just confined to our planet’s atmosphere. Space stations hurtle around the planet, satellites swing round overhead, space elevators pull passengers efficiently into orbit, and solar shades keep the beating sun from flooding our cities.
This is the price we pay for Earth. Those who control the space around our planet control our communication, our sunlight, our climate.
We’ve proven before that we can accomplish what some called the impossible, like men on the Moon. Now our achievements, though less spectacular, are just as important. We’re adapting our lives for a changed planet, one hotter, dirtier, with more people on less liveable land - but one with the potential to be home for everyone.
“History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren’t looking - an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.” ― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars