Overshoot - Part 2

Within the hour, he arrived at the middle school where he worked as a history teacher. As usual, he wrote the date on the board - April 29, 2095.

“Who here has heard of Earth Overshoot day?” he asked a sea of bored faces.

Nobody knew. Jamal sighed and started to explain. 

“Earth overshoot day is the day in every year when humanity’s demand for the Earth’s natural resources exceeds that amount of resources the Earth can renew during the entire year.”

“That’s today. Over a century ago, the first Earth Overshoot day recorded was December 23, 1970. So, who can tell me why this date kept appearing earlier and earlier ever since then.”

Nobody was listening. The kids had zoned out or were asleep. 

Jamal sighed and continued. 

“Looks like I’ll be giving myself the history lesson then. It all started when a company called Exxon commissioned a report which proved that climate change was real, human caused and a potential threat to all life on Earth. After immense scrutiny, the report turned out to be unequivocally correct but Exxon and the oil industry spent the next century trying to convince people it was wrong. Wars were fought over oil, mainly instigated by the formerly united states of America under false pretenses… who can tell me which former state of the union we’re in now?”

No one cared, so he gave up. A camera was recording the class so if he looked like he was teaching, he’d still be compensated. 

“That’s right. It doesn't matter. Back to the story, these wars made a few people obscenely rich. Those people collectively owned the oil companies; the same oil companies that hired another group of people called lobbyists to bribe senators and congresspeople so they’d approve drilling for oil at home and invading other countries to steal their oil. 

Wars increased the price of oil, higher the price, higher the profit.”

He could tell he was losing them. If the camera and its sensors detected that over 10% of the class had fallen asleep, he wouldn’t be compensated, so he skipped ahead. 

“Uhhh… after that, everything got worse. Who would have thought drilling for oil and burning fossil fuels wouldn’t change the climate, flood coastal cities and reduce crop yields, right? Probably the same people who didn’t think wars wouldn’t create refugees.”

His electronic teacher’s-aid device which also tracked the camera showed the sleep detector go from 8.5% to 9%. 

“Uhhh… anyway, so all of a sudden there were these waves of refugees and immigrants from overexploited parts of the world entering America and its allied countries. Talk about trading the frying pan for the fire!” 

9.5%

“Anyway, after that it was pretty much more of the same. Everyone had enough of America's wars, China became easier to trade with, the petrodollar system collapsed, US treasury bonds were cashed in, America's debt ballooned and the economy collapsed, inflation made everything unaffordable, automation took everyone's job, elections became irrelevant, and the starving masses switched their national pastime from baseball to fentanyl. 

In the second half of the 21st century there weren't many people left. Most had died of easily preventable diseases and poverty because they lost their jobs to automated machines owned by a few rich family dynasties. 

For the stuff their machines couldn't do, their humans could. Yep, slavery, even though no one called it that, was back after a brief period of feudalism. Well, at least this time it’s equal opportunity slavery, for every race, religion, and orientation.

Those of us left now are essentially branded property of the machine-owners, the oligarchy, and once our usefulness runs out we’ll be left to forage for food from the irradiated forest. But hey, at least until then we get to squat in some long-dead family’s white picket fenced suburban home, right? And that's why we have Arbor day… Oh wait, I got my notes mixed up. Sorry,  give me a sec.”

He fumbled with some files. 

“Nevermind, this year Arbor Day and Overshoot day overlap. Huh, must be a new record or something.”

“Dude, wtf is wrong with you? No one gives a shit about your soap-box, commie bullshit,” one of his students finally piped up.

“Yeah, it's not like we'll ever graduate. These charity schools only exist to reinforce every parent’s delusion that their kid is going to have a life only for some rich fuck to pull the rug out under them when they get their hopes up. It's entertainment for them.”

‘Well at least they're engaging,’ Jamal thought as he mentally patted himself on the back. The camera captured this, the whole class was awake, and his job was done.

After class, Jamal drove his beat up, 70 year-old jalopy to his second job in truffle-town. Every city in what used to be America now had a truffle-town.

Truffle-towns were where the rich lived. These places weren’t walled or protected in any way. They didn’t need to be. The slaves were constantly monitored by drones. The drones were everywhere and watched and heard everything. They even tracked people’s heart rates. They were equipped to pick up the slightest signs of subversive thought and vaporize anyone who thought them. But so far, no one was ever vaporized. They were just led to believe this because it kept them in line.

Killing slaves wasn’t cost-effective; without them, no one would be able to repair the machines or protect oligarch children… from their parents who couldn’t trust themselves to always be on their best behavior. This was a dark time when Freudian Coverups didn’t need to be covered up.