Life in 2075: Worlds of Our Dreams and Nightmares

LIFE IN 2075

LIFE IN 2075

Worlds of our Nightmares

This anthology contains stories from around the world, showing what life might be like in many possible futures. Seven of these stories fulfill some of our wildest dreams for the future; the other seven confirm our darkest nightmares. With this collection, we hope to nourish, embolden, and caution activists, changemakers, and ordinary people so that they may avoid a world that sinks to our nightmares, and fight for a world that lives up to our dreams.

Contributors

Mikayla Biggers

Emily Davis

Muskaan Khemani

Jade Holweger

Camille Minns

Sanjana Paul

Bhargav Satish

Chelsea Vargas

Minneapolis, MN

After the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, something finally cracked in Minneapolis. The decades-long pattern of everincreasing funding and militarization for the city’s police, once an unquestionable aspect of life, was now coming into question. People from all walks of life now saw the harm that police caused, that they’ve always caused, and suddenly, it didn’t seem normal anymore. It was a problem, and the community had finally found the courage to fight it.

That isn’t to say it was easy; there were of course the wealthy white folks with lakefront properties, the big downtown businesses with branded skyscrapers, and the entrenched political class with empty slogans, all standing in the way of a popular movement to defund and abolish the police. For a while, in the early 2020’s, the centrist politicians kept winning their elections, and it seemed like the police abolition movement had lost; but in hindsight, that was only the beginning.

Courageous and eager to learn from their losses rather than accept them, the Defund movement spent the next few years regrouping. As elected officials gave the cops even more funding, and the police department bought more and more expensive and dangerous toys (robotic riot control dogs? Automatic tear-gas rifles? Seriously?), the police got a little too confident in their lack of accountability - and that’s how they messed up.

In 2028, footage of a robot dog repeatedly kicking a Black teenage boy, curled up on the ground, made its way onto social media. It blew up immediately.

That same night, there were massive protests in the Minneapolis streets. “No more dogs, no more cops” was spray-painted onto the ruins of the newly burned-out Fifth Precinct. A nearby storage warehouse filled with robot dogs was busted open, with the robots left smashed or scrapped for parts. The next night, a crowd of tens of thousands was outside the Mayor’s house, demanding an audience with the man who had signed off on every single police budget increase that came across his desk. He came out, called for peace and unity, and was promptly bombarded with tomatoes. The day after that, the Mayor was followed everywhere he went, tomatoes splashing onto him the entire way. He spent the entire rest of the week drenched in vegetable juice, smelling like an overripe garden.

Then, on Saturday, with the tomato juice washed out of his hair, he held a press conference. His message: “I have heard the voice of my constituents. It is time to defund the Minneapolis police.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The police force’s budget was immediately slashed by a third, and that money was used to fund a community care task force. In addition to providing conflict deescalators, on-call mental health professionals, and restorative mediators, one of the new force’s duties was to understand the role policing played in the city (aided greatly by the years of educational work established by local activists), and remove the harm caused by policing. Turns out, the role of policing was itself the problem; police protected property and the wealthy while doing nothing to alleviate the social ills that cause crime in the first place.

So, in addition to transitioning the police department into the community care department, Minneapolis and the people’s movement that jolted it into action got to work eliminating the causes of crime. Today, after decades of transition, the city has well-funded mutual aid networks, free high-quality healthcare for all, well-equipped teams of nonviolent first responders, more public spaces, tight-knit neighborhood communities, and near-zero levels of both poverty and crime. To the people living here today, policing seems like wooden clubs seemed to our ancestors; crude, unnecessary, and obsolete.

Minneapolis, MN

After the strong social movements of the late 2010’s died down in the 2020’s, everything got worse, especially climate change. But the pain of climate chaos was far from evenly distributed; hot areas got hotter quicker, and especially for those living in developing countries, life has become nighunlivable in places that have had thriving local cultures for thousands of years.

While everywhere is worse off than it was in the early twentyfirst century, some places have been spared the worst of itlike Minneapolis. We’re well inland, so the natural disasters aren’t too bad, the infamously cold winters here have gotten more moderate on average, and the humid summers are still bearable for now - so everyone and their family, displaced from deserts and rainforests and coasts, wants to make a life here. And it would be a no-brainer to welcome them, right? Unfortunately, the police state doesn’t see it that way.

The movement to defund the police, which looked so promising in 2020, never really got off the ground. We had a referendum to get the Defund ball rolling in 2021, but it failed, and the police abolition movement never recovered. The role of cops in the city slowly went back to business-as-usualuntil the climate refugees started coming in the 2030’s. At first, the people of Minneapolis were welcoming, trying to keep up the reputation of “Minnesota Nice” for our new neighbors. But as the planet got hotter, the refugees kept coming, and the niceties turned cold.

An unholy political union began to emerge: wealthy white residents, cop apologists, big businesses, and the newlyelected conservative state government decided that “law and order” had to come to Minneapolis to “combat the crime wave threatening to destroy our city”.

Now, at the borders to the city, there are checkpoints manned by armed National Guardsmen. Everyone who enters has to go through the military, show two forms of ID, wait a two-week quarantine period, and submit to a fullbody biometric screening. The checkpoint cameras analyze you from every angle, so that the vast security network of the city can track you and watch your actions everywhere you go. If you so much as loiter for too long, a heavily-armed squad car full of riot cops (with no body cameras, despite their inflated budget) will show up to move you along.

Once you’re inside the city (IF you can even get in) you’re on probation; if you can’t find a state-registered job and report to a police station within two weeks, you’ll be kicked out for good; and the state-of-the-art surveillance system, armed with your detailed biometrics, will make sure there’s nowhere for you to hide. Since the city’s new refugees are incredibly desperate, local companies know they have the upper hand in this forced-labor market, so they’ll only employ the best (and whitest) migrants.

With access to a city database provided to corporations that compiles information on all city residents, these businesses can know everything about any job applicant before they even conduct an interview; meaning, only the most overqualified and least dissenting migrants can get jobs. In a show of cruel irony, the local McDonald’s stores boast that they have the “best-educated McDonald’s workers in the world”. Unable to land even fast food work, most refugees admitted into the city are deported out of it after their 14day probation period ends.

So, this is where Minneapolis is at: a violent, anti-migrant police state, supercharged by high-tech surveillance, protecting the property of the wealthy, white, and local-born at the expense of everybody else. I ask myself sometimes, could things have gone differently at some point in our past? Could the city have been a friendly place that looked after everyone who came to it? Maybe. But at this point, as the world gets hotter by the day, those thoughts seem like nothing more than a daydream.

Puerto Rico

In 2075, Borikén is a thriving oasis running on renewable energy, community solidarity, and local economies.

Our communities had a wake-up call when Hurricane Maria happened. The energy dependence that allowed the disaster to cripple and devastate our home was incredibly scary, and we had to do something to change it. Communities took matters into their own hands and started investing in solar energy. Energy-independent communities powered by microgrids started to pop up all across the island. Taking inspiration from Casa Pueblo, an energy-independent cultural center that began in the 1980s, communities began to reorient themselves as self-supporting, interdependent, renewable hubs.As smaller grassroots hubs began to emerge, Boricuas in the US saw emerging potential to come back and grow the local economy. Instead of running from the island, people started to come back. There was hope.

The passing of the Puerto Rico Status Act in the US Senate opened up an avenue for political independence, which Boricuas took full advantage of. When the referendum happened and Puerto Rico finally became independent from the United States, we flourished. First, we changed the name to Borikén. The name Puerto Rico was a constant reminder of colonial intentions (it literally meant Rich Port), and by changing the name to one rooted in indigenous Taíno history, we took the first step in dismantling histories of colonization. Borikén means the great land of the valiant and noble lord, and we centered indigenous Taíno values in rebuilding our home.

Dependence on privatized fossil energy transformed into the usage of community-owned renewable energy (including solar, wind, and tidal energy). In fact, we were even able to build out our renewable energy infrastructure into the greater Caribbean region. The Caribbean-wide Power Generation and Marketing Authority (PGMA), led by the Borikén government, distributes excess renewable energy produced in Puerto Rico to other Caribbean island nations. The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, and more islands receive energy through undersea cables serving as transmission lines. We have created a synergistic system where we support one another.

Community solidarity in Borikén has been growing and growing since we retook our sovereignty. We were able to get closer to our Taíno roots and embrace the core principles of kindness, reciprocity, and generosity.

Puerto Rico

It only got worse after Hurricane Maria. Wow, we did not know what to expect in the incoming decades.

There was Hurricane Maria, then Hurricane Tia, Hurricane Samantha, and the list just continues. For a while, things seemed promising after Maria –– small communities had gained energy independence and were slowly transitioning to renewable energy sources. However, these small-scale efforts were not enough. There was no centralized force pushing forward a clean green agenda. Instead, all we got were big corporations taking over the island and promising false futures that were never realized. First, the energy system was privatized. Then, the food system was privatized. Soon after, water was privatized. Then forests, streams, and lots of lands. Many Puerto Ricans fled to gain support from other countries––but they were faced with their own problems there. Now, much of Puerto Rico is underwater while its citizens lack access to clean drinking water. The inhabitants that stayed are seriously struggling––they have no access to schools, health care, affordable electricity, or food, and many are drowning under rising sea levels.

I managed to stay here through the only economic opportunity available to us––tourism. Tourism is the only thing that still thrives on this island. Rich wealthy folks treat Puerto Rico as a vacation spot. Whatever areas are not underwater have turned into giant, private, luxurious resorts, staffed by local Puerto Ricans struggling to get by. Green spaces that used to be preserved for the benefit of all beings turned into sources of pleasure for the very few that could afford it. The beaches that have remained, or rather, the areas of water that have been artificially altered to look like what beaches used to be, are managed by large corporations after the government sold them off for quick cash.

Puerto Rico has turned into a shell of its rich culture, people, and indigenous history. Much of the vibrant life –– animals, marine life, and humans –– have disappeared, only to be replaced by the soulless corporations that now own the island.

Nassau, Bahamas

In the late 2020’s, things were looking bleak for The Bahamas. Up until then, the nation of islands had relied on close relations with the United States, Canada, and other wealthy western countries to maintain its economy and provide a decent life for its people. However, the old world order was crumbling as rich nations fell into turmoil, increasingly turning inward, favoring authoritarianism and nationalism over their past global presence. For The Bahamas, a nation whose fate had for decades been tied up with the fate of the United States, this was an existential threat.

Now that the IMF was being dismantled, and foreign aid budgets slashed or cut entirely, the politicians in Nassau were desperately scouring for solutions to keep their nation alive in the face of continuously-increasing climate threats. Eventually, they found a troubling answer to their calls for help: tech billionaires.

The billionaires offered their usual, flashy brand of solutions: they could provide The Bahamas with electric cars, offshore wind turbines, and AIpowered sea walls capable of rising with the tides. However, they were no good Samaritans; in return for their climate aid, they would require that the nation develop itself in such a way that would supercharge its tourist economy, turning huge swathes of its land into gated playgrounds for the ultra-wealthy. When pitching this plan to Nassau, the billionaires hid behind the usual rationale: this was “sustainable development” that would take advantage of The Bahamas’ “competitive advantage” on the global marketplace. But everyone else who heard of the plan knew this was really about turning the country into Silicon Valley’s personal backyard.

It was a choice between our dignity and our future, and our leaders were hard-pressed to decide which path to pursue. Why was it always smaller countries like ours that had to sacrifice so that the richest could prosper? Why did we have to bend the knee to survive the climate chaos that other nations brought on by exploiting our people?

It was that question, ultimately, that saved The Bahamas. Why should we have to bend the knee? In that revolutionary spirit, we pushed forward into a new era for our nation of islands: an era of selfdetermination.

It started with a statement, to all the world: “we are not a playground for the Western world to toy with as they please. We are a sovereign nation, ruled by its own people, and we can dictate our own future”. In the spirit of self-determination, the massive Atlantis resort on Paradise Island, right across the bridge from Nassau, was reclaimed by a local tenant’s union that was tired of waiting around for the government to deliberate on The Bahamas’ future. This huge symbolic step in reclaiming the land for its people was celebrated with parties filling the streets all across Nassau and Paradise Island, showing the stymied government officials what the people were demanding: a free Bahamas, created for its people, not wealthy tourists.

As the celebrations died down, the Atlantis hotel was converted into a community housing cooperative, with massive built-in venues for shared meals and cooking. The fantastical swimming attractions were turned into public amenities for the children of the island to enjoy themselves. Locals’ eyes opened in wonder as they walked the resort grounds for the first time; there was a beautiful resource here, right in their own backyard, and they were never allowed inside until now? Why hadn’t they taken back the resort sooner?

Reclaiming resorts, however poetic, was just the beginning. The sunny capital city of Nassau soon embarked upon its first large-scale mission to give power back to the people: community solar for all. In order to transition to renewable energy, build community power, and support its citizens with good jobs, the island city set thousands of citizens across the country to work installing free solar panels on every rooftop, connecting them together in small neighborhood grids, and setting up community assemblies to determine how their neighborhoods’ energy is spent.

Once the community solar project proved to be a rousing success, a new construction program began to build comprehensive, modular seawalls around each and every island in The Bahamas. This project, even larger in scope than the solar endeavor, came paired with a jobs guarantee for every resident of the country who was willing and able to chip in.

And it was a success. Next time an ominous hurricane swept through the island chain, the solar-powered, community-owned, flood-shielded Bahamas remained intact with minimal damage. With this rock-solid foundation of energy, infrastructure, and independence to build on, it was only up from there. No longer were The Bahamas at the whims of fickle American billionaires; they were free, finally, to chart their own course.

Nassau, Bahamas

Ask any Silicon Valley venture capitalist or cryptocurrency investor where the best vacation spot in the world is, and they’ll all give the same answer: The Bahamas.

There’s something special about the country. Sure, during the day you can do the same things you would do on any other Caribbean destination - go to the beach, walk around (the nice parts of) town, and try the local restaurants, but there’s a sort of understanding that washes over the island when it gets dark. When the sun goes down, special places open up, highly exclusive places that not even the locals are allowed into. I’m talking night clubs like you’ve never seen before; and what happens in the club, stays in the club.

A few years back, a buddy and I decided to organize a little bachelor vacation in Nassau. We’d heard through the grapevine that there was this elite night club called Imperial, and it was absolutely the place to be. Nobody would give us many specifics, but they all said that Imperial was gonna blow our minds, so we were understandably excited to see it for ourselves.

On the first night of our trip, we took off for Imperial as soon as we were done with dinner at our resort. There was a hefty cover fee, and the doorman made sure we were suited and stylish before letting us in. I was glad they kept their establishment free of riff raff, but even still, it might’ve been the most involved process I’ve ever gone through just to get into a club. Once we were finally inside, we were pleasantly surprised: it was like home, but way cooler. The place was covered in shifting purple strobe lights, and I recognized a lot of the patrons as people I’ve met at San Francisco conferences, so I knew I would fit in well.

After I got a tequila from the bar (tequila is from Nassau, right?), I made my way to the mezzanine above the bar so I could get a lay of the place. The upper level turned out to be full of tables where Silicon Valley guys were chatting up local girls in tight dresses. A man in a three-piece suit approached me as my eyes wandered, and asked if he could introduce me to a lady.

“Maybe later,” I replied. “I was told this is the best nightclub in the world, so I’m trying to see what makes it so special.”

The suit looked me up and down for a couple seconds, then met my gaze once more. “I think I know just what you’re looking for,” he said, and he motioned for me to follow him down a hallway and into a side room. In the center of the room was a chair, hooked up to a hanging virtual reality headset attached to a dense nest of wires emerging from the ceiling.

As I entered the room, a calming blue light from the ceiling narrowed its focus until it was a spotlight shining above the chair. This was something new. I mean, of course I had a Metaverse™ room back home (who doesn’t?), but it didn’t l quite like this. This was something…a little more specialized.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” suggested the suit, with a small grin on his face.

Screw it, I thought. I came here for an island adventure. I sat down in the chair, sinking my neck into the leather headrest. Time to see what all the fuss was about.

The suit motioned to a man standing by the entrance to the room, who then nodded and disappeared into the hall. He reached up to grab the headset and lowered it down to my face, adjusted the straps to fit my head, and secured it snugly over my eyes.

Though I could no longer see him, I heard the suit’s voice from in front of me. “The headset interfaces with your Neuralink brainset. The process is proprietary but entirely safe, I assure you. In a minute, the headset will take control of your senses. I urge you now to simply relax and enjoy your time here in Imperial.”

So I got comfortable, sitting in darkness. There wasn’t any display to look at yet. But before I could wonder at how this all worked, I felt a flash of ecstasy inside my head like I’ve never felt before. Ohhhhhhh god.

Instantly, I found myself atop a grassy hill, overlooking a cute suburban neighborhood, with a dim but welcoming forest to my back. I heard birds calling out to each other back and forth and - was that the sound of fox pups playing? My god, I hadn’t heard that sound for at least 20 years. I… never realized before just how much I’d missed it. The ecstasy mellowed into a deep calm, as I laid in the grass and watched the clouds float by.

I sat there, mesmerized, hearing the sounds of kids playing in backyards below and birds chirping behind me for maybe five minutes. All I know for sure is that it wasn’t nearly long enough before the edges of my vision started to blur, closing in towards the center, until I couldn’t see or hear any of it anymore. The muted sounds of the nightclub began to filter back into my ears, and I felt the headset being lifted off of me. I looked up in bewilderment at the grinning suit.

“I hope you enjoyed your time in Imperial’s Metaverse™ experience. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please return to the bar area? We have another patron waiting for his turn.”

“Oh… uh, sure,” I mumbled, a bit bewildered, as I got up and ambled toward the door. That place, it… seemed like my hometown. It was just like the Oregon summers I remembered. How did they even…?

The thought was interrupted by another wave of pleasure radiating out from my brain. I swiveled my head to look at the suit, who was still wiping down the headset. Without so much as looking up, he answered my unspoken question: “What you’re feeling now is a little parting gift from us. Have a great time downstairs.”

The rest of the night was a blur. I went back to the bar, I danced on the girls, I might’ve started a fight. All I know is that they never kicked me out, whatever hell I got up to in there. It was awesome. Bars back home, they would give me the boot if I ever tried to start something, but the good people of Nassau are just too kind to do that to me. It was a place in the world where, for a night, I could have anything I wanted, anything I asked for, no matter what anyone else might think.

Over the next few nights, I got my buddies to try the Imperial headset too, and they all had just as transformational an experience as I did. We all swear by the place whenever someone asks for vacation recommendations now. Ever since that trip, we’ve all gone back at least once a year, just to do it all again. They love us in Imperial; after all, it’s Americans like us who keep their lights on.

Chandigarh, India

The Chandigarh Roses began in solidarity with the farmers' protests in 2020 and 2021 and the youth climate activists who rallied around them. Taking place against the backdrop of Hindutva fascist leadership, young people began fighting for a more democratic country - timidly at first, then en masse, louder, and stronger than ever. One of the breaking points was when a group of computer science students, fed up with being isolated from the society they felt they were accidentally helping to drive into the ground, began peaceful sit-ins that turned into conversation circles. There was a special emphasis on protecting members of the Dalit and Muslim communities, who faced unwarranted persecution in the land they have always called home.

Sitting among the roses and discussing how falooda is a mughal dessert, kitab is a shared word in many dialects of Arabic, and the linguistic diversity on the subcontinent, conversations began to turn to what happened in North Indian society. Vikram, a junior software engineer, brought up watching Amar, Akbar, Anthony with his masi and cousins. He marveled at how a Bollywood film from almost a century ago was somehow more inclusive than the current moment, featuring brothers of three different religions reuniting and being part of each others’ lives, a playful song featuring members of the Hijra community, and a woman doctor living her life on her own terms. As they talked about the threads of culture running through India, they absentmindedly sat closer to the trees, the bushes, and ran their hands through the grass.

They kept talking over the next few months, as they planted more flowers anywhere they could - spare patches of dirt outside their grumpy neighbor uncle’s house, organizing “garden days” at their little cousins’ schools, insisting their brothers have their wedding guests vouch to take care of a tree as part of their Shagun. They listened instead of rolling their eyes when their mothers wouldn’t let a single part of a meal go to waste - from saving their watermelon rinds from snacking to make Tarbooz ki Sabzi to reusing the water that vegetables were boiled in to make rotis. This slower way of living made many grandparents nostalgic for a time that they heard about from their grandparents, and those that still needed to be convinced were done so with some clever rhetoric about traditional values. While it was too hot to sleep on the roofs during summer nights anymore, the city sponsored activities relating to learning about historic ways of living, provided support for traditional transit modes and cooling systems, and embraced historic methods of largescale farming, first as cultural heritage, then as the primary food source for the city. City commissioners had signs in front of their now pleasantly-cooled courtyard offices, explaining how Punjab, Chandigarh’s home state, actually almost literally translates to "Land of the 5 Rivers", with panj/panch = 5 in Hindi/Punjabi, "ab" = water in Sanskrit, and how even the name Punjab is actually Persian. What started as the planting of a few flowers bloomed into a full-hearted embrace of the multicultural history of Punjab as a region, including acknowledging the painful history of partition under colonization by the British Raj.

Much work remains to be done - there are still bigots roaming around, sharing their opinions completely unhindered, and there’s no ignoring how much higher the average temperatures are compared to the last time this way of living was prevalent. But for just one moment, sitting between the roses and looking at the livestream of one of the many wheat fields swaying hypnotizingly in the wind, everything is ok.

Chandigarh, India

“The Chandigarh rose garden wasn’t always so hot”, I remember thinking when I saw the 45 C forecast for it, that lazy breaktime I was checking forecasts of places my family lived. When I was a kid, nani (my maternal grandmother) told me about how when she was a girl, she and her friend would go for a walk every afternoon and plot about how to marry off her friend’s evil older brother so he would leave them alone. Nani pulled feminist arguments from her PhD thesis, which was in Punjabi women’s history, and her friend provided colorful commentary. She said the government never used to have heat warning days and they could always do this, not fearing finding yet another small child unconscious on the street, collapsed from dehydration, malnutrition, or both.

My mom had me late. She was 38, a borderline unacceptable age for a Hindu woman to give birth to her first child. She resisted the marriage and the pregnancy for as long as she possibly could, but at 36, it was the only way she would be accepted so she could still see her mom, my nani. She doesn’t exactly hate my dad, but she doesn’t like him, either. Ma was a very proud woman, and something broke in her when the years of freedom fighting, union formation, and coordinating centralized, encrypted communications for organizers of farmer’s protests still ended in the uptake of Hindutva fascism throughout the country. That’s when she agreed to marry my father, a plain, not entirely ill-mannered man who worked as an engineer, her former profession. He was supposed to try and build better air conditioning systems for the deadly garmi (heat), an unwelcome, stifling phenomenon that now comes annually, just like the monsoon has been doing for centuries.

Ma used to quietly make modifications to his designs between making chai (tea) and rajma (a kidney bean dish), hoping to save a few more lives from the ravages of extreme heat wherever she could, despite knowing, in the back of her mind, that these air conditioners would not go to those who needed them most - they would instead be installed in the homes of bureaucrats loyal to the violent government, put in place by people grateful to breathe clean air for even a few moments while inside the homes of the wealthy.

This would be their only education or training. With the restructuring of the educational curriculum to only include Hindustan’s contributions to the world, massive rifts formed in the government between those who argued Hindustan had contributed fundamental knowledge to human society, therefore everything from modern physics to literature should still be included, and those purists who believed only what was created inside the border should be included. Everybody agreed history that glorified invaders must be struck from the books. In the midst of this schism was an entire generation which was not educated properly, on top of the already unequal distribution of access to education. Chandigarh, once seen as a shining jewel of education, now had only one university, parroting a state curriculum rather than pushing forward the rich body of research it used to. Now one half of the country does not understand why life expectancy has dropped back to the 30s, from breathing in polluted air, eating contaminated food, and constant internal warring over resources, while the other half denies the truth.

I was one of the lucky ones - I got out. The government believed the role of the woman was to be a mother, and nothing else. There was no need to teach girls anything beyond basic reading, writing, or arithmetic, and anything other than traditional clothing - salwar kameez or sari, in my case - was forbidden. Ma showed me pictures: the old phone she kept, sim card and antenna destroyed, and powered with an old solar panel she hid in her wedding trousseau; her wearing denim shorts and a Led Zeppelin shirt. She taught me physics, and how to perform emergency first aid maneuvers. She and her friend Garima made a pact that they would “marry” me and her son, so that we could leave the country under the pretense of his career.

I now live in temperate Antarctica after pursuing schooling in Argentina, where it still gets a little chilly some days, but is otherwise quite nice. There is not much work to do that doesn’t violate the central principle of Ma’s life - ahimsa (non-violence)but you can almost get by if you are an agricultural engineer. The soil all over the world can no longer support food, so massive vertical towers growing meat in vats, more tomatoes than anyone could reasonably need, and much more are omnipresent. The rajma never tastes like it used to when ma made it, before she passed away from smog exposure. I can’t even imagine what nani’s tasted like, or that of her mother’s - fresh, sun ripened tomatoes, picked off the vine in the garden, tossed into a pot where homemade garam masala (hot spice mix) and dhaniya (coriander) have been toasting with some onion and ginger. Rice cooked in a pot next to it, the starchy water filtered out and used to press saris, keeping them in wonderful shape for generations to come. Kids coming in from playing outside without respirators, dreaming about what their futures could be.

New York City

The sun rises over the metropolis. Morning birds sing their calls as they dart from tree to tree along Madison Avenue. Neighborhood bodegas flip their signs from “CLOSED” to “OPEN” as the smell of fresh bagels begins to waft into the street. Late-shift workers, fresh off the job, shuffle down into the subway to catch a ride home.

For a city that never sleeps, it’s surprisingly tranquil this time of day. Sure, there are commuters, early risers, and late-nighters walking and biking about; but without many cars on the street, the blaring horns are replaced by the sound of tapping footsteps.

As the sun climbs higher, people venture out into their local parks to exercise, meet friends, and enjoy the scenery. A trio in Marcus Garvey Park haul their instruments to the amphitheater and begin to play jazz for the pigeons, joggers, and tourists. The trees and hills dampen the sound for those still sleeping in their apartments. This quieter city is now a lot greener than before, too - locals estimate one block of green space for every four blocks of buildings, and that’s not counting the rooftop gardens.

Above the Harlem park, a group of families enjoy a green rooftop on top of Public School 79. Children run around a playset on the west side of the roof, while parents and young adults catch up over a brunch picnic in the shady garden on the south side of the roof. A familiar face walking down the nearby sidewalk hears his friends chatting above, and postpones his morning coffee run to climb the stairway on the east side of the school and join the rooftop picnic. He is met with giddy surprise, long hugs, and demands to catch them up on his recent adventures (which he is more than happy to oblige).

A gardener across the street, on the roof of Madison Park Apartments, glances at the commotion while watering her cherry tomatoes. Seeing the hugs, she smiles, and makes a mental note to call an old friend when she’s done tending to her plants.

As the sun reaches the peak of afternoon, rain clouds move in to cover it, precipitating a refreshing afternoon pour. In Upper Manhattan, at the corner of St Nicholas Ave and W 145th St, water hits the gravel rooftops of apartment buildings, seeping in and filtering through layers of sand, charcoal, and fabric before dripping down into a water storage tank on the top floor. Though many locals swear the water is plenty safe to drink, cautious residents primarily use it as greywater for toilets, washing, and bathing. For those living and working under these “blue roofs,” the rain is a welcome sign of a soon-to-be-full water tank.

Down at street level, rainwater slips down buildings and falls through cracks in the sky to hit the hard pavement. Incredibly, the pavement quickly absorbs this water, directing it through underground pipes bound for Harlem’s local water treatment facility, where it will be purified into drinking water. This system of blue roofs and porous pavement ensure there are never very many puddles on the streets of New York, conserving water and, perhaps most importantly, preventing the sorts of catastrophic floods that used to plague the city. Even hurricane season now poses an opportunity, granting the city an abundance of surplus water that will last them months.

By the time the rain clears up, it’s beginning to get dark out. The bodegas close once more as the people of the city return to their homes, visit restaurants, and have sunset picnics in neighborhood parks. It’s a Tuesday night, so by the time dusk passes and it’s properly dark out, the streets are as quiet as they were at sunrise; filled with little but contemplative evening walkers, dedicated party-goers, and the same late-workers from the morning entering the subway to commute. After a long day of building community, recycling water, and caring for the natural environment, the city has finally drifted off to sleep.

New York City

It all happened so slowly. Like frogs boiling in a pot, we went about our normal lives as the greatest city in the world slowly turned to hell on earth. In the late 2020’s it became clear that we weren’t going to “solve” climate change. Political gridlock at the federal level and hyperfocus on the present moment at the local level ensured that climate was transitioning from a popular progressive cause into a sinking ship filled with burnt-out activists and ever-increasing nihilism. Besides, our leaders believed that New York City had more pressing issues to focus on; as the economic engine of the free world, we needed to ensure a friendly environment for the finance industry, so that the rising tide of economic growth could lift us all up into a gilded land of endless wealth. Climate disasters, we were told, would barely matter once we reached those dizzying heights.

As climate activists exhausted their energy against the immovable object of capitalism itself, more were falling into despair; life seemed to lack meaning. And from this environment, something dark and twisted can grow.

In 2037, New York City elected a new Mayor, Mike Bronson. Mike promised the residents of NYC a return to a mythical past, a time when New York was a “city with integrity”. According to him, decades of pandering to “illegal immigrants, vagrants, and gang-bangers” had destroyed the city’s character, and turned it into a maelstrom of crime and impropriety. In his inauguration speech, Bronson promised to “restore the former glory of our boys in blue, so that they can once again strike fear into the hearts of the criminals that prey on our city.” In 2040, Hurricane Agnes gave him the perfect opportunity to take his supercops for a spin.

As the hurricane approached, meteorologists predicted that it would swallow the streets of Manhattan in waters up to 15 feet high, and Bronson declared martial law under the pretext of protecting the city from looting and lawlessness while prioritizing the evacuation of residents. In reality, in order to receive evacuation assistance from emergency services, residents were required to present proof of their lawful residency in the city; something that hundreds of thousands of people living in the streets and unregistered basement apartments of the city didn’t have. Once the wealthy and white had left the city to take shelter upstate, the poor were left to fend for themselves against the flood. If they dared to leave their basement apartments, they would be harassed and beaten by the NYPD; but, just as Hurricane Ida proved in 2021, if they chose to remain in their underground apartments and wait out the storm, their basement rooms would likely flood, and they may never emerge.

In the end, they weren’t given much of a choice. Right before the hurricane struck the city, the Mayor ordered that all residents be vacated from basement apartments, citing the “threat to public safety” that they posed. Residents, many of whom weren’t even able to communicate with the cops brutalizing them, were forcefully removed from their homes and either let loose to live on the street or beaten and taken to jail.

When hurricane season slipped into winter, the political class was stunned to find that the city’s “homelessness problem” was now worse than ever before. Bronson declared a “war on homelessness”, framing a police beatdown spree as a compassionate effort to shelter the unhoused and reduce the city’s rates of drug abuse. Without any legal options for seeking shelter, unhoused people were pushed out of their homes, then their neighborhoods, and eventually even the subway underground.

No matter where they turned, seeking even a modicum of warmth on a snowy night became a sure path to harassment and abuse by the NYPD. The city got colder as the year came to an end, and on New Year's Eve, the quants, hedge fund managers and the politicians all celebrated in their penthouse apartments while the unhoused poor were frozen and beaten in the icy streets below. Even to this day, the cycle continues; police violence creates problems that exacerbate poverty, justifying increased police violence. Every summer, people die of heat stroke on the humid streets of our city, and they are beaten, evicted, and fired for it.

Then, in the winter, they die of the cold and ice, with the same result. This continues year after year after year, worse every time, with no end in sight.

But hey; did you hear that our finance sector grew by 6% this year? I guess we really do live in the greatest city on Earth.

Curaçao

In 2018, the Isla Oil Refinery stopped operating via Petroleos de Venezuela. For more than a decade after, conversations had started and stopped regarding the future of the refinery. Many international private corporations were strong contenders, promising mass employment and a shift from oil to natural gas. As if that was enough of a step as our island was slowly going underwater, our marine ecosystems were disappearing in front of our eyes, and temperatures were getting unbearably hotter.

Thankfully, a company called CORAZON was one contender to take over the management of Isla Refinery. They were different from the rest – they had a plan to phase out the refinery and build up solar power infrastructure. It was a hard sell, no doubt. People were concerned about their livelihoods - would the phasing out of the Refinery mean that there wouldn’t be jobs to put food on their plate? That was the situation we had been dealing with for more than 5 years since the refinery had shut down and left so many unemployed. Would the solar business be able to support Curaçao’s economy? The oil refinery had been such a core part of Curaçao’s revenue. And truthfully, change has been difficult to adapt to on our island which is so tranquil. Most of the time, change has been horrible – either resulting in a recession, mass unemployment, the economy being shut down due to a global pandemic, or the Netherlands further encroaching on our sovereignty.

But this was something different.

CORAZON barely got approved to manage the refinery, but approved they were. In the years after the change in management, residents began to see the positive outcomes that came from going green.

Energy became substantially more affordable for all residents – and for many, it clicked. We have so much sun and land available in Curaçao, so it just makes sense to use it to power our grid. Solar energy began to power desalination plants, which most of us rely on for drinking water. As a result, the water became cheaper. Based on these successes, the waste management system (which used to just be dumping sewage into the ocean) was completely changed. Now, we treat all of our wastewater, re-using it for irrigation, greywater, and other measures. Our oceans are much better, and even some of the marine life (particularly coral reefs) are coming back. Subsistence fishing, once severely threatened due to low fishing stocks, reemerged.

Ahora nos tin hopi Dushi Bida, si! (“Now we actually have a good (Dushi) life!”)

Curaçao

It has been many years since I have seen the ocean when driving across Julianabrug (Juliana Bridge, connecting two areas of downtown Curaçao). As the wall surrounding the refinery began to get built up, the blue seasoften busy with cruise ships - began to disappear from our daily lives. The wall has only gotten bigger and more pronounced since its conception in 2025.

Protests began against the expansion of the refinery after Chevron CORP - which was a new subsidiary of Chevron with under-the-table support from the US military - was approved to take over the management of the refinery. As soon as their paperwork went through, they made plans to expand the refinery into the surrounding neighborhoods –neighborhoods that had been suffering from high rates of asthma and respiratory problems due to proximity to the refinery. They threatened to take away their homes, destroy them, and provide no sort of relocation services for them.

The protests against this move were historic, with residents from all over the island coming together to fight against oil, gas, and military interests. The Yui Di Korsou (YDK) fought bravely, breaking pipes, rupturing tanks, and damaging millions of guilders' worth of equipment. The financial damage and political pushback from the YDK made Chevron CORP scared for their future protests, and within the next month, construction began on walls surrounding the refinery perimeter.

What started as 10-foot walls have over time turned into a maze of concrete buildings, extending the refinery far beyond its original footprint. It now produces much of the petroleum products that fuels Central America and the Caribbean.

The refinery has expanded into much of what used to be Punda and Otrobanda – taking down buildings that used to be World Heritage sites to replace them with more oil and gas infrastructure. At some point, the excess waste produced by the expanded refinery began to be so much that they had to find a quick and dirty way to dispose of it. Where would it go? The ocean, of course. Since 2030, almost all of the waste Isla produces is let out into the ocean. The intense levels of pollution marked a steep decline in tourism.

What used to be turquoise water, white sand, and beautiful marine life is now a brown slush that extends hundreds of kilometers into the Caribbean from the borders of Curaçao. Tourists avoid going near the island nation– which is ok with the government because the refinery produces so much revenue.

The transformation happened within a couple of years, but now what is left of Curaçao is a thriving refinery protected by huge walls guarded by the US military. Very few cultural parts of Curaçao remain (like Julianabrug), and those that do were only left for military functionality, such as transportation between areas of the refinery, as well as food sources and housing for troops.

Richmond, VA

There were incremental movements for change in Richmond that helped push the needle forward on justice. A lot of change was ignited by one particular event in 2025: a white supremacist march in Richmond, eerily similar to the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. Tiki torches were blazed, hateful messages shouted, and bystanders were targeted by the racist and violent crowd. But, they were soon met with force, by Black and Brown counterprotestors who were fed up. They surrounded the white supremacists and shouted over them, and slowly demoralized them. Soon enough, many of the hateful protestors ran back to the safety of their hotel rooms.

Many were shocked as to how such a protest could even happen. It forced a city-wide reckoning with Richmond’s history – dating back to the days when it was the capital of the Confederacy. Instead of brushing past the violence the city had committed, we were forced to reckon with everything. Everything.

Richmond was the largest slave-trading center in the Upper South, and its violent histories needed to be acknowledged and then dismantled. These histories had continued well past the end of slavery by disenfranchising Black communities, destroying thriving Black towns, and perpetuating environmental injustice upon them. Until the early-mid 21st century, the city had not grappled with how racism had influenced present-day social, political, and economic structures. For Richmond to move forward in every aspect, we had to reconcile with the past.

Some of the richest folks in Richmond were generationally tied to slave owners, tobacco plantation owners, and long-standing white wealth. Even though Tobacco Row – a long line of tobacco warehouses and production factories – had been transformed into luxury housing and commercial shops in the 1980s, the footprint of tobacco and slavery very much lingered.

Community conversations were the first step in addressing these histories, which were directly tied to the white supremacist march. Conversations were weekly, and most of the city's residents attended at least one of them! Initially, food was the pulling factor for attendance. Local restaurants helped by donating some of their leftover food at the end of the day, which helped people come together over their shared food and culture. It prompted conversations about food insecurity, and then prompted more conversations about over-policing, urban heat, and historic redlining. In some of the most oppressed communities, such as Jackson Ward, people had multiple burdens that they had to deal with.

Inspired by the framework that South Africa installed as they were grappling with apartheid, a survivor framework was encouraged. People who influenced the city through the legacy of the slave trade owned up to it. They began to recognize the ways that their actions had perpetuated a system of oppression. Many such entities – banks that were complicit in redlining, industries that profited off of Black labor, and families that used to be slave-owners – actually made an effort to provide reparations to Black families who were generationally disadvantaged because of the slave and tobacco industries.

What is possible, and what we have seen over the past 50 years, is that we were able to start building a just city by centering racial justice in our approach. Through these community conversations, ideas have been raised and implemented on how to make Richmond more liveable – especially in the context of rising temperatures. As a result, urban tree canopy is now abundant across all communities–it's not only the huge tech centers that have green space anymore. People get together in parks scattered around the city, whether it be in Fairmount park, South Richmond Memorial park, or Woodhaven park.

Because of the city’s new racial justice-centered outlook, we were able to avoid green gentrification as we combatted the climate crisis, because tree planting programs were actively incorporating concerns of low-income, minority, and POC communities before the get-go of the program. I doubt that would have been incorporated if the city had not addressed the past to build a better future for all.

Richmond, VA

In the 2030s, Amacon (a giant technological multinational corporation previously situated in Silicon Valley) needed to re-brand itself. Many reasons prompted this change, including internal processes, changes in leadership, and increasing government regulation. To reach more people – or rather, to have more consumers and increase their revenue – they needed something new. But maybe something new could be built from something already existing?

Amacon realized that the lucrative tobacco industries – founded on slavery and continuing to rely on underpaid Black and Brown labor –may be a promising industry to expand into. With more digging, they found that the power of tobacco’s old money would be a perfect merger with Amacon’s new money. More importantly, it could be lucrative to merge their two highly addictive industries and maximize the combined revenue of tech and tobacco.

As Richmond, Virginia is still home to many tobacco companies, Amacon zeroed in on Richmond to begin their venture. They merged with several large tobacco companies, including Taltria and Guul Labs, and rebranded themselves as Tamacon.In 2040, Tamacon officially moved its headquarters to Richmond. In this new company, high-level tobacco and tech executives swapped strategies for expanding on the addictive potential of their products, taking detailed notes in the process. Tamacon created new plans for targeting consumers from a young age to create even more reliable customers for their products.

d technology as distraction were directed via targeted nts to Tamacon’s new tobacco products masqueraded as erry-flavored Chocolates’ or ‘Yummy Flavored reality, these were just repackaged Guul Labs products. bacco products started to be sold only through hnologies, skyrocketing the profits of both their tech businesses.

by their record-breaking profits, Tamacon created a nd-based campus that housed the employees and m with all sorts of amenities. To do this.they displaced Black and Brown people – a pattern continuously ichmond. No Richmond residents were employed, ch of Amacon’s professional-class workforce from moved to Richmond instead.

Climate change continued to get worse, but Tamacon and its wealthy employees were ok. As the years got progressively hotter, the campus was transformed into a green haven in the middle of an urban heat island. The increased urban tree canopy was a great nature-based solution to cool down Tamacon’s facilities,but nothing of the sort was offered to Richmond residents.

Instead, parking lots for Tamacon’s workforce and highways connecting the Tamacon campuses were constructed through local communities. After 2050, Tamacon built up three more campuses across the city. Due to the rapid increase in impervious, heatabsorbing surfaces in the city, the urban heat island effect made conditions worse for Richmond – at least, the Richmond that most regular people resided in.

Initially, construction on Tamacon’s facilities was one of the only avenues that provided work to local Richmond folks. But, many workers passed out and even died due to the unbearable heat and horrible working conditions. In the end, these sites were constructed at the expense of local workers.

Tamacon continued to extend its footprint and soul over the Richmond area – through tobacco plantations, manufacturing plants, and shipping warehouses. The poor, unemployed residents of Richmond were provided some opportunities for a livelihood by staffing the plantations, factories, and warehouses,but the jobs were horrible, with little time given for breaks, lunch, or even to use the restroom. The people of Richmond were trapped in a tobacco-fueled technological beast–all for the profit of a tiny minority.