California, Evidence Of What's To Come

California is entering another year for drought, and possibly be beginning of a "Megadrought".  How they're dealing with this is a template for more reactions to global warming down the road.  First, there's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.  We're now getting a mixture of denial, anger, and bargaining.  But what is most important to realize here, is that it's going to be different if your not rich.  The impact of global warming, if California is any evidence, is going to be greatest on the not rich, and the least on the rich.  As the truly dire consequences begin to occur, the rich will be more mobile, able to seek out places where the consequences are the least.  The not rich will suffer.  And naturally the not rich may not take to this kindly.  The rich will need to organize protection.  The natural end of all this will be well-defended enclaves surrounded by the not rich.

The Hunger Games portrayed something like this, and the book but not the movie saw it as arising from global warming.  But where I differ is that the Hunger Games romanticized the not rich and parodied the rich in their enclaves.  While my politics are opposed to the wealthy classes and with working and middle classes, I'm afraid that social disorder is going to play havoc with these divisions.  In the end, 50 years from now, I see the not rich as organized more like Somalia with gangs and militias and gripped by superstitious religions, while the enclaves are where the last vestiges of science and the Enlightenment remain.  So I'm hoping my children find themselves in the enclaves even though I have a current antipathy for the wealthy.