source ⟩ hypertext ⟩ public ⟩ latbs ⟩ earth-2099 ⟩ en.pug

//- meta
	slug: "latbs/earth-2099"
	lang: en
	title: "’99 Luftballons"
	subtitle: "Earth on the eve of World War III"

	category: history
	pageCreated: "1999-12-31"

extends ../../../views/latbs/layout.pug

append presets
	- crumbs = [{url: "earth", text: "Earth"}]

block content
	blockquote.epigraph
		p “They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory.”
		footer Chinua Achebe, #[i Things Fall Apart]
	blockquote.epigraph
		p “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
		footer Daniel Daly, 1918
	p.has-drop-cap June 27, 2099 #[+sc("CE")]. It’s a sweltering Saturday afternoon as spacelift crew get ready for the biennial Martian rush, firefighters buckle under the Amazon’s driest season in years, and American holidaymakers set sail to submarine resorts. In London, it’s half past two; in Lagos, it’s fifteen minutes to midnight.
	p In a quarter of an hour, all hell will break loose. A world where yesterday’s luxury is today’s poverty will see war on a scale unknown in anyone’s lifetime. Life expectancies have risen faster than age, every planet out to Uranus has been settled, and the powers of the world laid down atomic arms decades ago… yet now the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. How did we get here?
	h2#1-whose-planet-are-we-saving-here
		a(href="#1-whose-planet-are-we-saving-here") 1. Whose planet are we saving here?
			br
			small.subtitle Or: Geoengineering for fun and profit
	p TKTK - Talk about the philosophical differences in 21st-century environmentalism, between “save the planet for the planet’s sake” and “save the planet because we live on it”, the extreme fringes of both, and how that plays out internationally in the runup to the war
	h2#2-climbing-up-the-world-tree
		a(href="#2-climbing-up-the-world-tree") 2. Climbing up the world-tree
			br
			small.subtitle Or: The fragile triumph of interplanetary commerce
	p TKTK - Explain how the first space elevators came up, and how they compare to good old-fashioned rocketry, plus some more fringe proposals like guns, hooks, and launch loops
	h2#3-daily-life-in-2099
		a(href="#3-daily-life-in-2099") 3. Daily life in 2099
			br
			small.subtitle Or: It’s not all bad!
	p TKTK
	h2#4-a-timeline-of-events
		a(href="#4-a-timeline-of-events") 4. A timeline of events
			br
			small.subtitle From fifty years ago to fifteen minutes from now
	p TKTK
	h2#5-the-rest-of-the-world
		a(href="#5-the-rest-of-the-world") 5. The rest of the world
			br
			small.subtitle Or: Putting the “world” in “world war three”
	p TKTK
	+h3("5.1. North America")