NEW EARTH 8 : Will Humankind Survive or Perish? Read online

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  NEW EARTH 8, and for story bonuses,

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  NEW EARTH 8

  Will Humankind Survive or Perish?

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  by Ta Mundus

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  Copyright © 2017-2018 by Tao Mundus. All rights reserved.

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  ~ Note to Reader ~

  New Earth 8 is a work in progress. As such, it is not without its errors; grammatical, contextual, stylistic and others. Please, allow the author at least a small degree rhetorical leeway. Thank you.

  Having coming clear on this lacking, the story is coming along rather well with each new edition slightly improved over its predecessor.

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  - DISCLAIMER -

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters, business entities and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, business entities, or events is coincidental or fictionalized.

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  ~ CONTENTS ~

  (Abridged Version)

  Prologue

  1. Uncertain Future

  2. Two-hundred Thousand Years

  3. A Meeting of Worlds

  4. Seeds of Hope

  5. The Last Survivors (Incomplete chapter)

  6. Bio Ark

  7. When All Reason Fails

  8. Action Not Words

  9. Peace or War

  10. Beginnings

  * Epilogs 1, 2, and 3

  * After

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  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

   PROLOGUE 

  Sustainability Begets

  Sustainability nurtures health and well-being.

  Sustainability produces abundance and prosperity.

  Sustainability cultivates strength and security.

  Sustainability engenders unity and peace.

  Sustainability fosters preservation and perpetuation.

  Sustainability creates safety.

  Sustainability is survival.

  Sustainable balance is the way.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

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  Excess Destroys

  Excess causes imbalance.

  Excess destabilizes systems.

  Excess is weakness in instability.

  Excess precipitates dearth and scarcity.

  Excess spawns discord and provokes war.

  Excess, ‘The Destroyer’

  Excess is unsustainable.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  Humankind had exceeded its means.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  Existential threat loomed over the world.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  The response to this impending danger,

  the survival plan for humanity was to

  planetary engineer Venus,

  to form a new world,

  a ‘New Earth’....Neagi.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

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  1. UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  In the summer of 2019, a worldwide ensemble of billionaire philanthropists, fearing the socioeconomic and sociopolitical consequences of diminishing key resources joined together to found and fund the Earth’s Future Study.

  The objective of the forecasting study was to identify imminent threats to world civilization and to assign hard dates as to when such threats would likely become reality.

  The extensive, all-encompassing analysis was designed and conducted by a collaboration of some 250 of the world’s top scientists, historians, economists, sociologists, and technologists in conjunction with over 100 universities, scientific organizations, and think tanks worldwide. This coordinated effort of minds comprised the largest brain trust ever assembled in history dedicated to the understanding the global dilemma.

  The yearlong study produced a 2000 plus page hardcopy report supported by reams of analysis, thousands of verified tests and petabytes of big data. The projection and simulation models employed used the most advanced techniques and technologies.

  The outcome of the examination was alarming. Results revealed an inordinately stressed global system that was rapidly approaching a point of collapse. The cause of the stress was multifaceted and complex, but found a common source in a destructive cycle of competitive growth. In its simplest terms, the problem could be reduced to the global economic war between nations. Developing countries fought for market share footholds, developed nations brawled to move up in the standard-of-living ranks, and superpowers competed for economic dominance. A self-perpetuating cycle of competitive growth propagated natural resource depletion, noxious waste production, and, subsequently, armed conflict and war. Through the ages, this unmitigated, relentless competition for socioeconomic and sociopolitical command, control and dominance was depleting non-renewable resources while it was laying the planet to waste.

  Intensifying the problem, other stressors compounded the strain on the global system including overpopulation, climate change, the militarization of powerful new sciences and technologies, and irreconcilable ideological and cultural differences that put countries into direct conflict with one another.

  This competitive cycle had gained such momentum, and become so habitual, through the course of history that the socialogical pattern seemed virtually impossible to break and escape.

  Caught in a riptide of destructive competition and subsequent limitless growth, the planetary system was forced to swim against the current, quickly tiring and struggling to keep afloat. The Earth’s Future study concluded that based on current and projected rates of resource attrition - particularly with regards to depletion of energy, soil, and potable water - Earth’s socioeconomic/sociopolitical global order had a ninety-seven percent chance of failure within the next 70 to100 years. More precisely, between 2090 and 2120 it was highly probable that world civilization would collapse. Countless simulations and scenarios backed by hard data supported this time frame. Although there were numerous storylines as to how ‘the great fall’ would play out, the most likely scenario of this collapse was predictive of intensive competition over diminishing key resources, particularly energy sources. This economic rivalry between opposing powers would lead to armed conflict. Inevitably, conflict would escalate to a world war in which weapons of mass destruction would be extensively employed. The collapse of world civilization would follow.

  Additionally, the Future Earth study revealed a second planetary threat, one of even more, sever consequence than global social collapse. Though not as imminent, the study strongly indicated environmental catastrophe of unprecedented scale, total biosphere failure, was a real possibility. Given current and projected rates of environmental degradation, the vast majority of environmental simulations and projections showed a ninety-one percent chance of biosphere failure occurring in roughly one millennium. Sometime between 2950 and 3150 the life-sustaining component of the planet’s natural realm, the biosphere, would fail at which point all higher life forms on Earth would cease to be. In this not so distant future, the human race would end; human species extinction.

  So unprejudiced was the testing, so demonstrative the facts, so damning the data, so solid the proof that the truth and seriousness of global system collapse and human species extinction could no longer be sidestepped, rationalized, dismissed, or otherwise rejected and denied.

  Not only were the published results of the study distributed to all the world’s governments, but they were also made available and aggressively circulated to all people, the entire global community. After all, Earth was the people’s planet and they had a right to know the truth.

  In spite of the overwhelming evidence, most heads of nations were hesitant to move on the findings. The world populace, the global community, on the other hand, was in an uproar. “The end of our world? The end of the human race? No! No, this will not be our end”, they cried out. At last, knowing the truth, understanding the imminent existential threat quickly descending upon them, peoples of all countries and nations demanded their respective governments, leaders, and rulers take action.

  People who did not see a concerted effort on behalf of their leaders responded in protest. Worldwide, ‘Save Earth’ activism movements exploded. Never had the world seen such a driven and empowered activist movement. In the millions, in the tens of millions, in the hundreds of millions, people took to the streets with their signs and their voices. Earth’s denizens would not see their planet destroyed and themselves along with it. They organized, demonstrated, protested, and relentlessly petitioned the decision makers of the body politic.

  The people would be heard.

  The
world over, governments and public officials facing unpopularity, and confronted with the possibility of civil unrest, had been forced into a position where they were pressured to act. A global United Nations summit was called to address the matter at hand.

  [ILLUSTRATION HERE]

  Unlike other UN summits of this type, leaders pressured by their constituents and faced with hard, undeniable facts of the reality of existential threat before them, were encouraged not only to talk, but forced to cooperate and to act.

  Under duress of such conditions, an amazing thing happened. For the first time since the dawn of civilization, the better part of the world had found a like cause that superseded differences. Under the banner of this common cause, in the name of the continuance of civilization and survival of the human species, the better part of the world suddenly found itself united as one.

  With a special division of United Nations at the helm overseeing the enterprise, an accord was drawn up that set the conditions for participation. Every country was forced to make compromises. None were immune to concessions, superpowers especially.

  Central to the accord was an interim truce, the Global Truce Act. Participating countries agreed they would not declare war on any participant member country working towards the Save Earth solution. All current grievances and hostilities must necessarily be laid to rest for the solution.

  Participating nations and countries agreed to four principal conditions.

  First, central to the truce was a mandate for 100% nuclear disarmament, accompanied by cessation of weapons of mass destruction programs. Key firing components would be removed from nuclear missiles and key detonating components removed from nuclear bombs thereby effectively disarming them. Furthermore, all weapons of mass destruction facilities would be shut down. Regulatory inspection teams would be given the authority to examine any facility they saw fit to assure the ‘No WMD’ statute was held to.

  Secondly, the truce would be attended by a reduction in military spending by at least ninety percent. Standing militaries would be reduced to ten percent, or less, of their current size. All monies budgeted for defense spending was to be diverted to whatever ‘save Earth’ solution was decided upon.

  Third. To succeed to save Earth solution, the world would agree to work together. Hence, another key condition of the accord was tht countries agreed to put differences aside so they could work side-by-side. For the duration of the project, participants would work together as a team in ‘coopetition’, or ‘joint-work economy’, including coopetitive knowledge sharing. Economic and market conditions would be leveled and manipulated in such a way that all nations, regardless of wealth or power, would contribute to and benefit from the mission. Based on their respective contributions, each member would receive its fair share of economic and scitec (science-technology) discoveries that came of the project.

  Fourth, all agreed to empower the United Nations to act as overseer and commander of the mission. The UN would be permitted to maintain an active army of five million soldiers. This army would be comprised of military forces from all counties.

  The Global Truce Act would remain in effect until the save Earth mission was complete.

  While the joining of nations under a single banner was temporary, conditional, and somewhat uneasy, a great coup had nonetheless been won for world peace. For the duration of the mission, under the auspices of the Global Truce Act, world peace would be maintained. And so it was, for the first time in history, the better part of the world came to be at peace.

  Understanding the direness of the situation, sixty-seven percent of the nations in attendance immediately agreed to the proposed accord. Included in this group were all the superpowers and thankfully so. Surprising, even a handful of rogue states, and more than a few extremist groups accepted the conditions to participate in this greater cause. In the months to come, many others would join the cause and the ranks participating nations would swell to over ninety percent. During the course of the truce, this figure would fluctuated, give or take, five to seven percent with nations joining and opting out for various reasons.

  Having established an accord, the world’s nations were finally ready to sit down at the table with purpose and intent and get to the business of finding a way out of the awful mess we humans had gotten ourselves into.

  In the advent of the global system collapse as defined by the study, it was decided Earth needed an emergency backup plan, a Plan-B.

  The world’s best thinkers in their respective fields were assembled to devise solutions for the problem. Numerous stratagems were developed and reviewed. In series of successive examination and rating rounds, the best ideas moved to the top of the list. Finally, three survival plans remained from which a final selection was made. A plan was hatched to save the human race.

  Earth’s Plan-B became ‘Plan-V’, Mission Venus. In a nutshell, the idea was to planetary engineer Venus, that is to say, to make the now burning, poisonous planet inhabitable by humans. Then, should Earth’s biosphere begin to fail, as had been predicted, humans could migrate to Venus en masse where continuance of the species could resume.

  Venus was chosen over Mars for planetary engineering various reasons, not the least of which was the greater similarities the planet shared with Earth and the availability of elemental resources, which Mars lacked.

  Not only was the sum of this collective, cooperative global effort a success, but an unprecedented success verging on the miraculous. As could be seen in a timetable of major achievements, the mission progressed at an incredible pace. With the resources of the entire world directed towards the mission, amazing things happened. Extraordinary accomplishments were achieved. Planetary modeling, affirmed to take from 1000 to 10,000 years, or more, was executed in a mere fraction of the time.

  In less than 100 years, water was in abundance, the planet’s surface was green with vegetation, the air was breathable, and a colony of over 2000 workers had been established. As a bonus, a viable energy source had been found on Venus. Through cooperation and a concerted effort, that which was believed undoable was done. The impossible had been achieved. The mission was triumphant.

  Yes, solidarity, the concerted, communal effort of the world’s nations, proved incredibly productive. When countries started thinking and acting collectively as a one-nation world, rather than as independent, competing nations, when we put our common good before our uncommon politics and ideologies, the progress which resulted proved to be truly amazing. It seemed solidarity had saved the world.

  By 2086, the oxygen levels on Venus were able to sustain humans without the need for artificial breathing apparatus.

  The planetary reengineering had been so comprehensive, the transformation so complete, that when the reforming was done, it was if a new planet had been created. As such, it was fitting that Venus be renamed. The name chosen for transformed Venus was ‘Neagi’, a combination of two Greek words, nea, ‘new’ and gi, earth. Venus had become, New Earth, Neagi.