There are only ~500M of us left, after the convulsive transformations caused by climate change severely diminished the planet’s carrying capacity. Most of us now live in ‘lifeboats’, in places that were once Canada, China, Russia and the Scandinavian countries, shoehorned into cities created virtually overnight to accommodate the millions of desperate refugees where the climate remains marginally tolerable.

Before the seismic shocks of the great upheavals, people’s movements were unfettered, and they could breathe unfiltered air, roam in the woods or simply watch their kids play soccer outdoors. Today, the unprotected strips of land exposed to the elements are forbidden zones, plagued by drenching rains with howling 160-km-an-hour winds, alternating with fierce dust storms, the deadly soil tsunamis that rumble up from the deserts that blanket what used to be the United States. When there is a break in the wild weather, the scorching sun relentlessly cooks the atmosphere to temperatures of 82 celsius or more by midday, making it impossible to step outside without body armor and oxygen tanks.

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