We decide that the world’s best chance of fixing the climate with technology is if private businesses do it.
Our billionaire playboy overlords start deploying huge, flashy technology projects (all named after themselves) to re-engineer the climate.
Overall, the global temperature does start to drop, but there are some unfortunate side effects. Weather patterns are disrupted, leading to awful droughts in some parts of the world, and floods in others. Mexico City, Cape Town and Tokyo all have to introduce water rationing, while Beijing and New York suffer the worst flooding in their histories.
We also send up the first manned Mars missions, so we’ve got that as a backup.
Billions of dollars have been spent on Mars exploration. Some estimates suggest that bringing the first four people to Mars could cost $6 billion. But many scientists, like Lucianne Walkowicz who works for NASA, say we should stop looking for a backup planet in case climate change makes Earth uninhabitable. Instead, she argues, we need to refocus our energy on preserving our planet.
