Wake-up Call: 2035

by Robert J. Traydon

  The Chinese President stood his ground against the gathering storm of global denunciation. He rationally defended his policies and at the same time commended his people’s self-sacrificing efforts. He described Chinese citizens as willing heroes rather than submissive victims, which made each and every one of them feel proud of their outstanding planet-saving achievements.

  In an international press conference, he reinforced the fact that the Chinese people’s efforts had been of significant environmental benefit to China, and also to the whole world. Second to this, their efforts would spare China from any potential remediation that would be carried out by the Supreme Beings upon their return to Earth. He stated in no uncertain terms that his core priority was to keep the people of China safe, and secure their long-term survival.

  The Chinese population did not doubt the sincerity of his intentions and often thought of his popular mantra, ‘Our efforts are for the Earth’s environment and for the sustainable future of humankind’.

  By the end of the first year, national pride and patriotism had swept across the nation’s population. The Ultimatum had become one all-encompassing countrywide community project, executed by the people, for the people and for the planet. Everyone was striving for the common goals of compliance and environmental equilibrium. The President only hoped that this positive momentum could be maintained for the remainder of the three-year interim period.

  April 2036 – September 2036 | Earth: United States’ Response

  In the months that followed President Jameson’s impeachment, President West made it clear that the United States would be abandoning all efforts to implement the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty. During a formal announcement, he cited various reasons for the decision including the negative impacts the treaty was having on the country’s economy and social wellbeing, both of which he believed underpinned national security. The declaration bolstered his popularity, which saw him secure presidential victory in the November 2036 election.

  President Jameson feared the worst and rightly so. The official decision by the United States to renege on the treaty was seen as the setting of a precedent. It was immediately capitalised on and used as an excuse for a host of other nations to follow suit. This presented a huge setback in terms of the Ultimatum’s worldwide implementation. The Principals were quick to reiterate that heads of state who took the decision not to comply, would be doing so at their citizens’ peril.

  Tensions quickly escalated between the new leadership of the United States and the Chinese President, especially when China announced its intention to ramp down all trade with the United States. The Chinese President even went so far as to start selling vast quantities of US treasuries, which lowered their value and pushed up interest rates, inflicting significant pain on the American economy.

  Refusing to be intimidated, the US Federal Reserve responded by embarking on the largest quantitative easing campaign ever instituted in their nation’s history. This caused an inflation bubble which heavily depreciated the value of the American Dollar. The situation spiralled out of control to the point where the Chinese President was left with no alternative but to back down. He came to the realisation that the United States was fully prepared to drag the entire world economy down with them, just to prove the point that they could not be coerced into complying with the Ultimatum.

  The United States’ authorities relished their economic victory, but the Chinese President knew that it would be short lived. The interim compliance review deadline was approaching fast and the United States’ nonchalant attitude towards the Ultimatum was openly inviting consequences of unfathomable proportion.

  September 2036 – March 2037 | Earth: Worldwide Response

  By the time the first year of the interim compliance review period had passed, only a handful of the world’s other 195 nations had been successful in implementing the vast majority of the Ultimatum’s conditions. In the months that followed, the number of dissidents who were outspoken in their opposition of the treaty swelled dramatically, especially after people began to feel the pinch of lifestyle moderation.

  Of great concern to the Principals was the steady decline in the authority of the worldwide Global Compliance Monitoring Agency. Its monitoring activities in more than half of the world’s nations were being severely hampered by political interference. Some of these nations refused to provide the GCMA with any compliance data, while others provided partial, manipulated or even false data. In most cases, nations found devious ways to inflate their compliance data to keep them just beyond the reach of sanctions.

  When data integrity was called into question nations were formally requested to submit their source compliance data for verification. The requests were most often ignored, denied or deferred indefinitely. Where this was the case, the GCMA demanded unimpeded access for their inspection teams to conduct their own independent verification tests, but these were also refused. Some nations even threatened to incarcerate any members of the GCMA who stepped foot within their borders. The GCMA was then forced to confront these nations in international tribunals, which resulted in protracted disputes that the GCMA’s leadership could ill-afford.

  It became worryingly apparent to the 12 Principals that more time was being spent trying to resolve seemingly superficial reporting discrepancies than actually ensuring compliance.

  Relations also began to deteriorate between cooperative nations and the GCMA, mostly because they trusted their own data over the GCMA’s data. Disputes arose as to how measurements were being taken and how the data was being interpreted. Even third party mediators found themselves embroiled in multiple, complex and opposing environmental theories, which gave different sets of figures equal plausibility. Disgruntled nations claimed to be the victims of a global compliance witch-hunt.

  In cases where cooperation had never existed, or had broken down completely, the GCMA had to rely entirely on satellite surveillance, and air quality tests from bordering nations to best estimate the compliance data. It turned out to be a surprisingly accurate technique, which was proven when applied to 25 nations whose reported and verified data closely matched the GCMA’s externally estimated data. But there were those nations who remained unconvinced of the GCMA’s estimated data, with some dissenters embarking on a crusade to discredit the agency. Some even called for a vote of no-confidence in the GCMA, stating that it was nothing but a puppet agency of the Principals.

  Heads of state also became increasingly unsure whether to trust the GCMA’s data for the purposes of imposing sanctions or not, so decided to err on the side of caution and exercise convenient leniency. The confusion actually worked in their favour since the nations imposing the sanctions often had as much, if not more, to lose than the nations on which the sanctions were being imposed.

  The Principals vehemently defended the GCMA and their published figures, and urged the rest of the world to regard them as completely dependable. They emphasised that it would be perilous for nations to lull themselves into a false sense of security with internally generated figures that had not been verified by the GCMA. They also reminded nations that the non-submission or manipulation of their compliance figures was self-defeating, since the true numbers would be immediately known by the Supreme Beings when they returned. The Principals’ warnings were, however, disregarded … and the difficulties continued.

  Many people around the world carried on with their daily lives, deliberately oblivious to the potential remediation and environmental catastrophe that stood before them. They blatantly discounted the fact that the Supreme Beings would be returning … and felt reassured by the assumption that even if these Supreme Beings did really exist, they would not dare take on the might of the human race. Their threat of remediation was seen as little more than ‘hot air’, and people were prepared to put everything at risk to call their bluff. Eventually people ceased to believe in the threat at all.

  It was also deeply disappointing to the Principals that the celebrity dignitaries had not taken mo
re prominent roles in promoting the treaty as had been expected. In fact, rather than supporting it as pledged upon signing the treaty’s commitment register, they began to scorn it with discrediting remarks. One celebrity, a famous singer, even made a hit song titled, ‘I would rather die than comply’.

  Religious leaders also refused to acknowledge the Ultimatum saying that it was ungodly. They encouraged their followers not to participate in anything to do with the Ultimatum, and told them to speak and act out against it at every given opportunity.

  Some governments attempted to adopt radical new policies to encourage compliance with the population management section of the Ultimatum. These included: the ‘Sterilisation Compensation Campaign’, launched in Indonesia; the ‘Child Entitlement Lottery System’ introduced in Bangladesh; the ‘Capital Punishment for Serious Crimes Against Humanity Policy’ in Mexico; the ‘Repatriation of Non-citizens Act’ implemented by the European Union; and the ‘Legalisation of Self and Assisted Euthanasia Bill’ passed in the United Kingdom. Each of these policies was met with widespread public demonstration and outrage when rolled out. All of them failed to achieve their objectives and were eventually abandoned.

  The only nations that had managed to consistently achieve their population compliance milestones were China, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Namibia, South Korea, Singapore and the Soviet Union. All these countries, besides the Soviet Union, had succeeded by adopting Brazil’s protective imprint contraceptive technology in tandem with China’s newly revised ‘One-child Policy’. This included the stipulation that increasingly popular ‘in vitro fertilisation’ (IVF) procedures, which now numbered almost a million annually, could only be carried out with a single ovum during each attempt. The purpose was to negate the high incidence of multiple pregnancies (32% of all IVF pregnancies) – twins (25 %), triplets (6%) and quadruplets (1%)*.

  [* A Swedish fertility expert conducting research on IVF, established that the predominant driving force behind multiple ovum implants was to maximise IVF success in order to minimise the potential extra cost arising from multiple IVF attempts. The fact that the cost of raising each additional child from multiple pregnancies would be 50 to 100 times the cost associated with further IVF procedures, seemed incidental to prospective parents.]

  Although met with initial resistance in Namibia, the ingenious Chinese family planning education campaigns had assisted the Namibian authorities in winning the general population over. The populations of Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, South Korea and Singapore were fortunately already in decline, with single child families slowly becoming a financially-orientated preference – so it was merely a matter of formalising and implementing a cohesive one-child policy to manage the decline.

  Some people felt that this was unnecessary since the prohibitive cost of having a second child was in itself a preventative measure. But many others were in fact pleased with the policy as there was growing resentment towards the prejudiced correlation between wealth and family size. Wealthier families could afford more children and thus on average had much bigger families. But the policy had now made it fair for everyone, irrespective of wealth.

  The Soviet Union had paid no attention to the Ultimatum whatsoever. However, its population in the north of the country had suffered a terrible recurring spate of influenza, which had claimed almost three million lives in the last eight months alone. Shortages of fuel and power had only exasperated the situation through the cold winter months. This epidemic, together with their natural population contraction rate, was sufficient for the nation to comply with its population management requirements, irrespective of its attitude toward the Ultimatum. Unbeknownst to the government, the reduced population had inadvertently resulted in the Soviet Union complying with most of the Soviet-specific Ultimatum targets.

  The citizens of almost all other nations simply refused to accept the Ultimatum’s population management conditions and targets. Hundreds of millions of parents who already had young families, rebelled against the Ultimatum by purposefully trying to have more children. Pregnancy rates soared as a direct result, much to the dismay of their governments.

  Compliance to the other sections of the Ultimatum was also startlingly low, including adherence to the environmental designation zones, incorporation of dietary reforms into society, and the ramping down of fossil fuelled power generation and transport. Nations were heading for disaster and the Principals warned them as such.

  March 2037 | Earth: Compliance Appeal

  At the midpoint of the interim period, 18 months after the summit, the Chinese President decided that it was time to address the world’s disappointing response to the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty. He organised a press briefing in his personal capacity and had it broadcast globally for every citizen of the world to watch.

  ‘Greetings to all people around the globe. I stand here today to urge the world’s nations to recommit themselves to the Ultimatum Compliance Treaty. Many nations continue to ignore the Ultimatum, and I must warn them that they do so at their citizens’ peril. Their blatant disregard for the Ultimatum will result in two certain consequences. The first is the assured remediation on an unknown scale by the Supreme Beings; and the second – in the highly improbable event of the remediation not materialising – would be the slow yet certain demise of our one and only life source, planet Earth.

  Both of these scenarios are sufficiently compelling for the Chinese people to be taking the level of action that we are. Our efforts and sacrifices have certainly not been made in vain, and should be regarded as a sign of respect towards every other human being living on this planet. We are ensuring that our environment prevails and we urge the rest of the world to follow suit. We cannot do this on our own, it has to be a globally united effort.

  Every day, we strive to be a leading example for the world to follow – proving to every other nation out there that what they perceive to be impossible, is actually not. If the People’s Republic of China can achieve compliance with the Ultimatum, then there is no reason why any other nation in the world should not be able to achieve it as well. I must state that our success has depended on the willpower and commitment shown by each individual person across our nation, and we urge the same of people from all other nations. Yes, there has been sacrifice and cost, but these pale into insignificance when compared to the catastrophic future that awaits us if we continue to sit back and do nothing.

  I have tried my utmost to motivate global compliance in terms of the treaty that was signed, but instead, the exact opposite of what the treaty set out to achieve has been realised. It is ironic that the nations which are achieving the highest levels of compliance, are the ones being politically and economically isolated by the growing cartel of non-compliant nations. This is intimidation in its purest form and we will not tolerate it. We should all be striving for compliance rather than condoning non-compliance.

  Where is the much needed example from the world’s most developed and powerful nations? They have reneged on their obligations as stipulated in the treaty. I am thus forced to remind them that it is humanity’s very existence that is at stake here. Our species, humankind, faces a critical tipping point, and it is now time that we all wake up to this unassailable fact. China has gone above and beyond its mandate to give this world and its people the future they deserve, and it is now time for all other nations to do the same.

  In closing, I must remind each and every human being of the fast approaching Supreme Beings’ interim compliance review, which is now just 18 months away. If you’re not going to comply with the Ultimatum to save the world’s environment, then at least do it to save yourselves from the incalculable remediation that the Supreme Beings warned us would surely follow. Their wrath will fall upon those who fail to comply and, in this regard, do not expect any leniency as that would only put our environment at further risk. Let it be known that these Supreme Beings will not hesitate to remove the human threat if that is what is required to save this planet!

  I
must therefore stress again, that it would be prudent for heads of state who have not yet implemented the Ultimatum in accordance with the treaty, to do so without any further delay. Your citizens’ lives and our living planet’s future depend on it.’

  That is where he ended the press briefing. A clearer and more pertinent message could not have been delivered. He would have to wait and see what the world’s response would be, although he was not overly optimistic that anything would change.

  March 2037 – September 2038 | Earth: Ultimatum Deadline Approaches

  Over the second half of the three-year interim period the Principals maintained allegiance to one another and their Ultimatum Campaign, even though their leadership positions and authority may have changed. Their initial optimism after the Global Unification Conference had steadily turned to despair when faced with the reality that the majority of the world’s nations did not have the determination or ability to implement the conditions of the Ultimatum. Even with the compelling evidence that was widely available and mostly known to the world population, people were cynical and preferred to live on in a state of comfortable denial. Little cognisance was being taken of the Ultimatum’s seriousness.

  The Supreme Beings’ apparently outrageous assertion that Earth would reach its environmental tipping point within 22 years, was further researched and modelled by environmental scientists from 20 well-respected academic institutions across the world’s most highly developed nations. Of those, 14 institutions demonstrated that the date was correct to within two decades. The other six contradicted it saying that much of the data supplied by the Supreme Beings was erroneous, and that the date was out by at least one or two centuries – if at all. The Principals were quick to point out that all six of these institutions happened to receive most of their funding from huge corporations that profited from resources, products or human behaviour that caused environmental degradation; while the other 14 did not.