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Consider it no happenstance that Donald and dystopia both begin with a "d." Sadly enough, they have all too much in common. Right now, the big D is clearly intent on creating a little d globally. After all, before he was even sworn in as president again he had already launched a dystopian imperial version of foreign policy that seemed to tie the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland ("MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!") in a knot. And count on this: that's only the beginning of what he's planning to try to do that could, in the end, leave this planet heading for an almost literal hell on Earth.
In fact, if you're in a dystopian mood, think of those record-breaking burning lands around Los Angeles of recent weeks as an introduction to the future Donaldtopian world of the president who doesn't believe climate change is anything but a "hoax" and "one of the greatest scams of all time." He's already eager on his first day in office, in fact, to reverse Joe Biden's latest climate gesture of banning offshore oil drilling along much of the U.S. coastline. It's going to be, he insists, another of his many promised "day one" acts, while he dreams of launching the most massive oil and gas drilling program imaginable. Honestly, if this were fiction, I don't think you'd believe it.
Given our world, were this indeed a novel and not the life we're all now leading, you would undoubtedly consider it the wildest sci-fi imaginable. Only 40 years after George Orwell's classic novel 1984, no such luck, of course. So, let TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, who runs the must-read Informed Comment website, take you on a little journey into what indeed might be "our" future in -- no, not 2084 but 2048, thanks to -- yes! -- The Donald. Tom
A Time Capsule from 2048
What Turbocharged Carbon Will Do to Our Children
By Juan Cole
My name isn't important, only what I have to say. I'm writing with a pencil because I need to conserve my batteries tonight. It's Year 24 of Our Trump (though he himself, of course, is no longer with us, just his kids who are running things). I feel like I should try to explain our era to whoever opens this time capsule a century from now, though you may need scuba gear to get at it. A lot of records could be lost by then. The Chinese climate hoax was less of a hoax than we thought at the time. Forgive me, Donald, but despite what the New Evangelical Church says, you were anything but infallible -- even if I still can't say so publicly.
I'd like to move away from the coast, maybe even go north. But real estate in the interior is too pricey, especially at higher elevations away from the flood plains. Looking on the bright side, though, my bunker has held up alright so far, even during the usual Cat 7 hurricanes, and I've stocked plenty of canned soup. I do worry, though, about being submerged by a storm surge. No one wants to end up like those poor people in Galveston.
I only hope that the state police won't find my solar panels, which charge my contraband batteries to keep the AC going down here. We're all haunted by that Black August in Palm Beach. It turns out that they had 100 percent humidity then. Combine that with temperatures reaching 120 F and it dead-on kills you. Your sweat just can't cool you down anymore and you end up with terminal heat stroke. Of course, most of them could have been saved by air conditioning if it hadn't been for the blackout at that new nuclear plant. Bad timing. It turns out such plants use water for cooling and, that day, the local water was so hot they had to shut the plant down.
Tipping Point
There was an unforeseen climate tipping point we blundered into. Looking back, I now realize that the U.S. put out 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the year before -- yes, before! -- the Second Advent of Our Trump. Horrific as that may have been, it was only about 11% of total global emissions, which hit 41.6 billion metric tons that year before the Second Advent (up from 40.6 billion tons in 2023). In short, we used up our carbon budget twice as fast as anyone had predicted, though I wasn't paying attention at the time. My friends then would have thought me crazy if I had.
Even a few years ago, such facts and figures would have seemed unbearably wonky to me. I didn't realize my wife would divorce me over them and I'd end up alone here in my bunker, doomscrolling the dark web looking for the catastrophes they don't let the mainstream media report anymore. Don't worry, I use a virtual private network and I don't think the NSA can trace me. The long and short of it is that the world was going in the wrong direction even before Our Trump returned that second time and turbocharged that all too unfortunate trajectory.
Some people think we should flee the Big One. For me, it's too late. The highways are a parking lot and the price of gasoline is too steep because of the fracked fields going dry. Maybe Our Trump shouldn't have banned EVs. And I can't fly out of here anymore (even if I could afford to). It's too hot for the airplanes to take off. I hadn't known it, but flying depends on the air having a certain thickness, and hot air has less volume because the molecules speed up and spread around. That's what Alfred, my PAIC (Personal AI Chatbot), told me when I asked him. Not sure I understand, but it doesn't matter. The planes are grounded, and so am I.
The Resurrection and the Triumph of Coal
When Our Trump and Secretary of Energy Joe Manchin put billions into reviving Big Coal, that shot U.S. emissions up to six billion metric tons of CO2 in just a couple of years, then seven billion, and so on, launching an international trend as Trumpist-style parties took over ever more governments globally.
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