Firefly Light

Chapter 5

During the course of the twentieth Century, the human race had seemed to attain god like status. We had split the atom, conquered small pox, and landed a man on the moon. Unfortunately, we failed to end world hunger or find peace, and had, instead, witnessed the increase of war, poverty, famine and pollution. At century's end our ability to come together in order to resolve the problems that plagued the world had deteriorated. Instead of cooperating, we became more and more divided by ideology, religion, power and greed. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Critically, the middle class began to disappear, decreasing in numbers for the first time since the Victorian era. Utopian futures for mankind, which had been fantasized about during the early and middle part of the century, seemed very far away by its end.

At the beginning of the 21st Century nothing was done to alter the continuing degeneration of our civilization. In fact the opposite was the case. Disastrous policy decisions, both economic and political, especially those made during the first decade of the century accelerated the old problems and created new ones rather than solved them. The world's population had reached the incredible number of seven billion, but we would never reach eight. The combination of increasing deaths due to disease, war, lack of clean water, famine, natural disasters and diminishing fertility finally all started to add up to exceed the birth rate.

As the new century advanced, the economic and ecological situation of the world continued to decline. Nations collapsed and anarchy reigned in more and more locations around the globe. The religious war waged on the West by radical Islam smoldered on, bursting into open flames from time to time. Global warming resulted in a slow, but steady rise in the average temperatures around the world. This generated progressively more damaging and dangerous storms and alteration of regional weather patterns, usually for the worse. The ice sheet on top of Greenland and the Arctic retreated further every summer and sometimes during the cooler months as well. The same was true with Antarctica as huge ice sheets shrank and broke away from the continent. Coastal waters rose, some islands disappeared and seasonal storms became more hazardous and violent with increasing inland damage. The weather in many parts of the world became not only hotter, but dryer as well. The mid west of the United States was slowly turning into a desert and the amount of rainfall in general was down throughout the country.

With the world becoming a hotter, dryer place, crops were more difficult and expensive to raise. Famine, which had been restricted to third world countries at the start of the 21st Century, became common in the developed countries as well. A higher and higher percentage of the world's population went to bed hungry every night.

Pollution levels around the world also became increasingly toxic. The incidence of Autism and other mental and physical abnormalities became more common. Social and educational systems became overwhelmed with the demands made for special education and handicapped needs. After the Iranian War, the Western powers no longer had the capital to fund government assistance programs and the needy went without.

In the Far East, China pursued its expansionist goals and fought two limited wars (while the west was occupied with Iran) with Japan and a coalition of other Southeast Asian countries. As food became scarce, their masses of humanity were already very difficult to keep fed. The fishing grounds claimed by these countries became battle grounds. In China itself, more and more of the northwestern part of the country was becoming desertified. North Korea remained a constant threat because of irrational, dangerous behavior. Russia was struggling to just keep together a country that was increasingly fractured along ethnic and social lines.

Iran refused to give up their destructive dream of becoming the most recent member to the list of nuclear armed nations and in 2028, open conflict with Israel and NATO was the result. Russia and China were close to becoming involved in the war and the world seemed on the brink of total destruction once again. The Third World War was avoided at the last moment when the West agreed to stop its offensive and return Iran's original borders. They also withdrew their demand for a change of government, but Iran had to surrender all nuclear ambitions and allow full inspections by western teams at any place they chose for as long as was deemed necessary.