On Thursday it was a wonderful surprise to walk into the staffroom to find a carrot cake to celebrate my retirement, especially as it was made with carrots from our own school garden. Considering how strict butter and sugar quotas currently are, it was exceptionally kind of Mrs G, the last woman standing in the Learning Support department, to bake it for me.
At 75 years young, I’ve reached the point at which I can finally step away from the classroom. It’s amazing to think my mother’s generation gained their pensions at the age of 60. What a difference there’s been over the past 50 years. When I started my diary in 2024 I didn’t imagine I’d stay at the chalkface for so long, but that was before the global Climate Crash in 2034. Anyway, if you haven’t kept up to date with my ramblings over the past 20 years, here’s the lowdown on what’s going on in 2045.
The state of the environment
All the warning signs were there yet, internationally, radical action on climate was simply far too slow. The desire for growth on our planet of finite resources was too strong so excuse after excuse was made. Although environmental consequences of warming started relatively slowly, emissions continued for years after the demands of Just Stop Oil to just stop oil. The Climate Crash then happened rapidly, catching many people unaware, and caused global food shortages on a planet of almost 9 billion people. Efforts to keep Business As Usual failed and everything seemed to spiral out of control.
After emergency solar geoengineering solutions failed global heating exacerbated feedback loops such as unstoppable melting of the ice and permafrost in the Arctic which then released more methane than a trillion Bunsen burners. Temperatures in the tropics increased, sending a billion people in search of safety. The Alt-UN estimates millions of people have already died but it’s difficult to get reliable data with power outages leading to instability of IT systems and AI used to obfuscate the truth. It’s been a little grim to be honest but c’est la vie.
Climate projections were right. Average global temperatures have risen by 2.2°C. In the UK wild weather events make Eowyn in 2025 look like a storm in a teacup. Flooding from torrential rainfall means many towns are being abandoned and precious farmland is too saturated for crops. Some coastal areas, such as the Norfolk Fens and Yorkshire cliffs are no longer habitable due to rapidly rising sea levels and coastal erosion: we have our own climate migrants and they didn’t come via small boats. Every couple of years severe heat waves cause serious spikes in the death rate. If only we’d heeded the calls by Insulate Britain to insulate Britain, it could have kept houses warm in winter and cooler in summer heat .
Air pollution has declined since petrol is no longer available for the general population although the need for warmth means old furniture, mass produced chip-board and plastic, is often burnt in homes leading to noxious fumes. Food security is the overwhelming issue so I am now the Education Lead for Food Production in school. After decades of suggesting gardening should be part of the curriculum, managing the ten school allotments has become my raison d’être. We’re lucky to have apples in the orchard even if we’re now pollinating them using paintbrush as invertebrate populations, including bees and butterflies, collapsed.
The 6th mass extinction is well underway. Quelle horreur! However, there are plenty of rats, rabbits and pigeons which can be delish in a stew or as an amuse bouche. The oceans are a toxic soup with unmanageable algal blooms, plastic islands and PFAS. Nonetheless, there’s no point crying over spilt oat drink, we didn’t listen to Extinction Rebellion when we had the chance.
The state of politics
For decades politicians made empty promises and it’s almost unbelievable Trump is still in power. Conspiracy theories suggesting he died around 15 years ago and was replaced by AI have never been proven. He’s on his 6th term but even he might struggle now that Global Premier Musk has scattered himself over the Pacific following his rocket explosion in a last push to get off planet. He would be fish food, if there were any fish left in the oceans, maybe a squid ate him.
History does have a nasty habit of repeating itself, we should have learned from the rise of fascism in the 1930s to prevent it in the 2030s. It goes without saying Reform formed a tragicomedy of a government following their financially-backed coup d’état. The UK North South divide has become smaller since what’s left of the government decamped to Darlington following the flooding of parliament and failure of the Thames Barrier. Reductions in inequality are primarily due to the fact that the south is now almost as challenged as the north. The possibility of devolution hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles. Divided we’ll fall.
It was miserably entertaining watching the oligarchs and dictators fighting over the scraps before they went to ground, hiding in their bunkers. Rumours abound that some of the worst culprits have been executed but there’s so much misinformation and disinformation it’s difficult to know for sure. We live under the threat of World War 3 since the US invaded Greenland and there’s talk about a global New Order, it just makes me laugh as I’m old enough to remember the old rock band of the same name. Underground movements gathered some followers demanding ‘respect existence or expect resistance’. If only we had the energy.
The state of the economy
The carrot and stick of growth and austerity were used mercilessly. Labour’s experiment in the 2020s on sustainable growth turned out to be anything but. We abandoned hope of achieving Net Zero and opted for Newt Zero instead, along with zero bats, bees and butterflies. We transitioned wretchedly from capitalism, to disaster capitalism, to disaster. Zut alors! Carbon taxes failed to materialise, Degrowth wasn’t given a chance and we just tumbled into Post Growth. The economy is now based on bartering or bribes; I am delighted with some knitted socks recently swapped for some winter greens.
The collapse of private pensions in the 2030s means that most of us are working well beyond 70. The monarchy has been reduced to a skeleton crew following the removal of their main assets to support the transition to subsistence farming so even King George is digging for victory.
The state of society
Fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goals was always going to be tricky but, given the rampant greed of the psychopaths in power, they were as unrealisable as a fairy tale. Food shortages mean that obesity is now declining and meat is a luxury. Ultra processed foods, such as high protein chemically manufactured shakes, are great for keeping starvation at bay when crops fail. On the smallholding we might not have access to coffee or chocolate but we can still make tasty alternatives from dandelion roots and broad beans.
Media organisations, including the BBC, were taken to court for suppression of climate science, not that it made a difference. The Citizen Control Act of 2038 made surveillance a constant threat. We rely on daily government audiocasts and more robust news over the RG (rebellion grapevine) analogue radio waves. There’s a travel embargo for all but essential trips due to global risks. Gone are the days of high carbon recreational flights so Heathrow’s 3rd runway lies abandoned like a steamrollered white elephant. Some good news is that folk music gatherings, community energy and growing projects have been booming.
The NHS is not quite dead and buried, but it might as well be given successive pandemics over the past 20 years. At the age of 80 and above, boomers are now dying off in their droves, leaving the fragments of society to be picked up by Gen X, Millennials, Gen Alpha and ill-fated Gen Beta born in 2025 or later. To keep them out of trouble, there’s compulsory national service for 16-18 year olds to work on food production, civil defence or flood mitigation.
The state of education
The retention and recruitment crisis in education never went away. Successive DfE policies ranging from use of AI teachers, students retained in ‘learning cells’ and classes of 60+ didn’t work. After failing to actually teach young people to live sustainably DfE and Ofsted eventually left schools to their own devices so we’ve been able to embrace the chaos and adapt. The birth rate has continued to fall so class sizes are becoming smaller again.
In Home Management children learn how to create cleaning products from vinegar, and have a production line of making beeswax wraps, cleaning cloths and blankets from old clothes. We can trade them for products we can’t make or grow such as pencils, chalk and fabric. We’ve been having fun developing the use of hydroponic growing racks in the old sports hall and hosting community events which improves mental health alongside studying the rise and fall of capitalism including case studies on the fossil fuel industry, fast fashion producers and water companies.
The study of Natural History is still important even though much of our precious biodiversity has been consigned to history itself. We’ve lost much but there is still so much to save. We were in the garden this week and one of the pupils found a live worm. The class gathered round, excited. I choose a child at ‘random’ (i.e., the most careful one) and let them hold it before putting it gently back in the soil. Youth is endlessly entertaining. They were not nervous or scared, they were giggly, as if they had been worm charmed.
Au revoir?
In the 2020s Hubster said that things would get worse before they get better and, as a prepper strategist, he was right. Way back in the 1980s he predicted environmental collapse around 2038, he was still a tad optimistic. However, there’s light after the darkness as humanity is currently emerging through countless emergencies. We’re implementing nature-based solutions, eat home cooked food from home grown produce and are working towards resilient communities. The transition to sustainable living was a long time coming. Maybe we should have shouted ‘vive la révolution’ years ago.
So there we have it, a whistle stop tour of life in 2045. Of the near infinite number of decisions made by humans, this is the result. Maybe it was greed and capitalism, or allowing people with power to influence decision making, maybe it was people’s lethargy, or just that we are not such intelligent beings after all? Que sera sera. What would I have done if I’d left teaching back in 2025? Was I institutionalised or trying to fulfil a purpose to prepare children for this future? Je ne sais quoi. Anyway, I’ll just say ‘à bientôt’ because today, for the very last time, Mrs Bird has left the building.
Note to self: Ask Hubster to put a bottle of his vintage organic cider in the fridge to celebrate. It’s high time for a glass of fizz. Remember the good ol’ days when we used to get French champagne?
PS: Any feeling of déjà vu between the year 2045 as described in this diary and published dystopian future novels is purely a coincidence.
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