Satire: America after climate change

SATIRE

A FUTURELESS FUTURE

Predicting what the world will look like after climate change

SHRUTHI MANIMARAN MANAGING EDITOR

It’s 2040, and America is on fire.

Mount Rushmore is impossible to see through the smog. Yosemite looks like something out of a Stephen King novel. The Hudson River is the color of tar.

Who could have predicted this other than every scientist and teenage activist in the world?

Where are all the politicians, you might ask?

Well, Donald Trump is currently looking for a new resort for socially rejected white men to hide in because Mar-a-Lago—like the rest of Florida—is completely underwater.

Bernie Sanders and the entirety of Vermont were destroyed due to a major hurricane; his last words were something like, “the top one percent...”

Joe Biden is still in the White House; the Secret Service never let him out because the air in D.C. is so polluted it could kill someone. The only way to survive is to wear a military-grade gas mask, which many angry Republicans complained restricted their freedoms shortly before they dropped dead from the toxic fumes.

The Rose Garden is barren and instead of the press, it’s flooded with empty promises and old climate bills Congress never passed. The Green New Deal? More like the Gray New Reality.

Ted Cruz is resting in his private Texas estate, finally coming to terms with the possibility that this thing called “global warming” might be caused by humans and not Antifa. He’s becoming quite the activist and is begging Greta Thunberg to be his mentor.

She’s a bit reluctant.

The global community is desperately scrambling for solutions. France is still defending the Paris Accords, confused as to how doing the bare minimum didn’t save the planet. Boris Johnson is upset that fish and chips are becoming rare commodities due to the lack of actual fish in the sea.

In school, kids learn about ancient creatures that used to live in the Arctic. They watch vintage National Geographic footage of polar bears and penguins roaming the ice caps and are amazed. To them, Narnia and the Arctic are basically the same thing.

Americans are persevering. While some moved to the Netherlands, Denmark or just any other country that believes in science, the true patriots stayed. They did the most American thing they could: pretended their actions had zero consequences. No way a socalled ‘climate crisis’ is going to end Sunday night steak dinners.

Influencers have become a rare species. Around 2032 their brand-sponsored trips to “exotic” places like Bali and Cancún dried up—figuratively and literally—because of long-lasting droughts.

Gen Z was ordered by the government not to produce any offspring because overpopulation was exacerbating food shortages. Initially there were protests, but eventually people got over it and joined various Tik Tok houses to simulate a family.

Yes, some aspects of this situation have been exaggerated—Ted Cruz would never ask a woman for help and Bernie Sanders is obviously immortal. However, as crazy as it sounds, if we don’t learn from our mistakes and save the planet, this will all become a bleak reality.