Emperor of the World
Chapter 6 of a fictionalized history of the future of a world very much like our own
Previous: Chapter Five - Chapter One
Chapter Six
From Adaptaion and Maladaptation in Cities' Responses to Climate Change, by Rachel Starfire, “Chapter 1: An Overview”
By the middle of the century and the cataclysmic States election of 20XX, climate change was an undeniable and irreversible force impacting habitability all over the globe. It's effects made some cities more habitable, but mostly had the reverse result. The impacts on habitability stemmed primarily from three main causes:
1) Rising sea levels that caused permanent flooding, temporary flooding from discrete natural events, and infiltration of groundwater tables;
2) Increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events; and
3) Changes in low, high and average temperatures.
Rising sea levels were a direct threat to a relatively small number of cities - although many of those were major cities - and direct temperature changes had only a marginal impact on most cities, but extreme weather events had devastating impact on a wide swath of cities. It was the rare city that did not face major challenges from at least one of these forces of climate change.
Those cities that did manage to escape major harm directly from climate change generally DID wind up dealing with major problems caused by the fourth force unleashed by climate change: migration. People fleeing from impacted cities flocked to the few cities left mostly unscathed. This migration could be either a burden or opportunity for the receiving cities, depending largely on how those cities responded.
Periphery City was an example of a city that escaped most of the natural impacts of climate change thanks to a protected location and favorable latitude. The city had low elevation and high elevation sections, so it had some sea level rise impacts, but acted in advance to mitigate those. What Periphery City did not anticipate, and did not respond to adaptively - at least in the first two decades of the phenomenon - was being the most popular destination of climate migrants in north and central Merka. Thanks to social policies enacted in the city in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the city had a high wage scale and a beneficial social and employment climate for the working and middle classes. It retained this reputation even after a substantial decline in that climate in the Trumpen-Bide Era which saw an acceleration in elite concentration and a general breakdown in social order throughout the nation.
The first wave of climate migration took the city by surprise. Seemingly overnight, a million people had descended on the city with little more than what they could carry, some having investments but most having little more than pocket money. Jobs existed for many of the migrants, but housing was a different story. Periphery City experienced an explosion in homelessness, featuring the previously unknown phenomenon of the full-time employed homeless. The city government tried to extend services but lacked the resources. Homeless and refugee advocates alleged that the city’s attempts were half-hearted.
The migrants kept coming faster than the local economy could absorb them. The encampments kept growing despite a succession of city sweeps, until the city simply gave up and acquiesced in mass-scale squatting in the formerly industrial and warehouse districts near the port and south of the city core. What grew there was North Merka's first favela. The ironic tragedy of Periphery City's peripheral favela was that it grew up in the one part of the city subject to periodic flooding and vulnerable to extreme weather events, as it was barely above 1999 sea level and protected by the harbor seawall.
Mayoral candidates frequently ran on promises to address homelessness and do something about the migrant situation, but as the years turned into decades and marched toward the middle of the century, the city government was effectively powerless to do anything. Meanwhile, the people continued to come.
New Core City was an example of a city that was subject to multiple climate change forces and failed to adapt....
Thugz Mansion, Periphery City
"How do you feel?" I asked her for the fifth time. We were just outside the doorway to the right of the speaking podium. She turned her head to look at me and rolled her eyes. I was more nervous than she was. Of course, I had my presentation in an hour, so that had a lot to do with it.
Talia was being introduced by a local businesswoman and political leader, Maria Ordoñez, who was working tirelessly to increase economic opportunity for migrants. Ordoñez was going through Talia's accomplishments, then: "And I now present Ms. Talia Li!" There was scattered applause. Almost everyone in the room was media, but a few supporters had come to watch. Talia squeezed my hand and strode across the room to the dais.
"Thank you, Maria, for the kind words," she opened with, looking over at her friend and colleague with a smile. Then she straightened up and surveyed the room. "And thank you all for coming. Your attendance means a great deal to me." She covered her heart with both hands and gave a slight bow of her head. Then she stood straight and strong, and began to speak:
"This morning I filed the papers to enter my name as a candidate for Mayor of Periphery City. I grew up in this City; I fought for this City; I have served this City on City Council for the last three years. I love this City. But I also fear for this City. We face serious issues that impact the lives of all our citizens, and the current leadership has shown no ability to address these existential challenges.
"But even more fundamentally, viewing these issues merely as challenges is short-sighted. They are also opportunities. They are opportunities to remake our City, remake our country, remake our world.
"The number one issue facing Periphery City is the immigration to our City of people fleeing the destruction of their homes by a climate change our national leaders have failed to address. They have come here seeking a chance to rebuild their lives in a safe environment. Each is a real person with skills and talents, education and experience. Each of them is an opportunity to add to our City, to its labor market, to its small business base, to its economic and cultural life. And we squander that opportunity when we exclude them, when we fail to go to them and find out what they can offer. We have failed to heed the lesson of history that immigration is good for the communities that welcome it. This immigration is a burden on our resources because we have made it so.
"I am running to change that.
"Unlike others, I do not accept - indeed, I reject - that immigration is the cause of all our city's problems. The failure to affirmatively integrate these new people into our community is but one of the complex problems our city has failed to address. It is not immigration that has led property developers to only build ever more expensive, ever more needlessly luxurious residential buildings for the past three decades, resulting in a glut of 'luxury living spaces' at the same time we face a severe shortage of affordable housing for a strong working class.
"It is not immigration that has caused job growth to slow decade upon decade until turning into job contraction in recent years.
"It is not immigration that has caused medical bankruptcies to climb every year, leaving over 40% of our city's population with a bankruptcy on their credit records. It is not immigration that has caused the debt load of our citizens to increase by 300% in the last 20 years while median household income has declined by 15% in real dollars over the same span.
"It is not immigration that has made higher education so expensive that fewer working class youth attain bachelor's degrees than in 2020, and those who do graduate with twice the debt as in 2020.
"And finally, it is not immigration that has created over two dozen towers in our urban core that sit completely vacant, with dozens others that are between 30 and 75% vacant because the people who own them have no need of them and refuse to price them at a level that working class people can afford." She paused and silently let her gaze traverse the room, settling on individuals in every section of the audience. I was so proud of her in this moment.
"No, it is the failure of leadership at all levels - national, state and City governments - to concern themselves with the interests of the working people, and the people who wish they could be working, while these leaders prop up a system that serves only the wealthy and powerful, choosing to accept the benefits bestowed by the wealthy and powerful, while blinding themselves to the suffering and insecurity of the citizens they are supposed to serve."
She stood up even straighter, as if that were possible, and raised her voice to a leonine roar: "I do not need their money. I do not want their money. I will not accept their money. I will do everything in my power to make their money POWERLESS in this City, and I will devote myself entirely to caring for the needs of the PEOPLE in this City. I believe in this City, and I believe in the desire of all people to contribute as they can and support themselves and their families through their own efforts. I believe that a City leadership that cares about their success can harness their abilities and build a great City for ALL of us!
"And that's why I am running for the office of Mayor of Periphery City!" she shouted to the heavens, then bowed and strode off the dais. Her face was exultant, defiant, implacable, until she saw me smiling and clapping like everyone else. Everyone in the room had risen to their feet and applauded. She broke into a big grin and ran the last few steps to throw her arms around me and smother me in a hug. She kissed me hard on the mouth then whispered in my ear, "Now it's your turn!"
I smiled but truth was now that she was done, I was getting very nervous. "Come eat," she said, and grabbed me by the hand. The buffet tables were surrounded by mobs of ravenous reporters, but they made way for us. We each filled a plate with food and found a table in the corner by the door. I ate in peace while she tried to down a few bites between answering questions. Nobody noticed when I slipped out. I had a few minutes to go over my notes and try to get comfortable before my session started at 13:00.
My session was in a small auditorium with a desk on a podium. Behind the desk was a displaywall. I sat behind the desk and touched the desktop. A rectangle the size of a placemat lit up. With a few touches and swipes, my wearable - Talia called it my 'relic' - had downloaded all my notes and data to the desktop. I studied while the attendees filed in. At 13:00 exactly, the door slid shut and the lights changed. The lights over the audience went down and the desk lit up.
Empress Catherine and Dash were front and center. They both smiled encouragingly at me when we made eye contact. I recognized the Mayors of Hellae, and Chimenho City. Fourteen Mayors spread out in the five rows of seats. From the faces, I guessed I had a representative sampling of the Pacific Rim region.
"Thank you all for coming to hear my presentation on nation-states, city-states, and the changing global system. Forces unleashed decades ago have brought us to this point where the future will look different than anything any of us have known, and if human civilization is to advance positively into the future - if human civilization is to survive, we must recognize the changing conditions and make the right choices for our people.
"One hundred years ago, roughly one third of the world's population lived in cities. In North Merka, Europa and Pinjan, the majority of the population was urban, but the rest of the world was primarily rural. Economic activity was shared between urban and rural areas. Political power generally followed the pattern of economic distribution, with the nation-state being a practical aggregator of political and economic power.
"During the last one hundred years, the world has seen a dramatic change in the distribution of population and economic production. Today, 68% of the world's population lives in cities. A staggering 90 to 95 percent of global economic production takes place in cities.
"Just as cities now dominate the global economy, a sub-group we can call megacities dominate the urban share. The six hundred largest cities hold over one-third of the world's population and produce 70% of the global economic output. All of you represent cities in this group.
"Political power has not followed this distribution. Because of national and provincial lines in most countries, and the design of political institutions - for example the States with its upper house and its executive elections being based on political subdivisions instead of population - political power remains roughly equally distributed between cities and rural areas, and in some places rural power dominates.
"One proxy for political power is the share an entity pays into the revenue of the political system against the share that entity receives from the political system. On a global basis, the largest cities pay into their national and provincial governments an average of 22% more than they receive in funding. In the States, this figure rises to 30%. Cities have difficulty obtaining funding from larger political subdivisions for needed infrastructure such as public transportation because of hostility of rural politicians towards the needs of cities.
"During the last fifty years, national and provincial governments have decreased their financial contribution to education, transportation, infrastructure and social safety nets. The city governments have had to take up the slack." Most of the listeners were nodding their heads. "More and more, it is the cities that are taking care of the people, while the national governments offer less and less assistance. And cities are doing this with more constraints on revenue because of the difficulty of taxing capital, and the impacts of repeated austerity measures required of governments by the capital markets.
"If we turn our focus to regional and global issues, we see a lack of action by national governments. Investment in regional infrastructure is down, resulting in a degradation of transportation networks between cities. Damage from natural disasters often takes years to be repaired, and in many cases never is. Nothing has been done to reduce carbon emissions. Assistance for coping with migration is non-existent. In many countries, the only national governmental involvement in migration is sweeps by armed units to arrest and deport migrants deemed undesirable by the central political authorities." More nodding of heads. Several Mayors shifted in their seats. "A loss of control over capital has degraded national authority and power. Political instability crosses borders and even war has broken out of the nation-state paradigm.
"It has been argued that the national borders now only serve as fences to control people and to protect capital from control and taxation. The nation-states exist only to protect and serve the ruling elite." I paused to let all of this sink in. I could see that I had their attention, that I was not telling them anything they would reject, because they had experienced much of it.
"The Mandate of Heaven has been central to Qinese political philosophy for millennia, resting the government's right to rule on care for the welfare of the people, and when a government did not care for its people it lost the Mandate and was subject to rebellion. The States were founded on the principle that it is the right of the people to abolish a government that has become destructive of its rights and institute a new government. Sovereignty arises from the consent of the people, and the people do not owe that consent when their needs are not met.
“In most so-called ‘democracies’ today, participation in elections has fallen steadily, to the point where less than half of the eligible voting population bothers to cast a vote. Majorities of voters are declining to grant their symbolic assent to their national governments.
"It is the cities that are caring for the needs of the people. I submit that the crises that are upon us, many of them created by the nation-states themselves, and the failure of the nation-states to take any action to protect and care for the people in these crises, has removed from the nation-states the Mandate of Heaven, and that the people have the right to remove their consent to be governed by those states. The cities have the right to lay claim to that Mandate, as the cities are providing for the general welfare of their people. It is the right and duty of the cities to claim sovereignty from the nations and deny the authority of the nations over them." I could see that I had shocked them, and questions were burning in the air over their heads.
"At the same time, it is abundantly clear that these crises, and the conditions of our current civilization are of a global scope, that individual city-states acting alone, without any central guidance, can do no better a job of dealing with regional and global issues than the failed nation-states to which we no longer owe allegiance. The primary reason that nation-states are incapable of governing this planet is because those who will prey upon the people, create crises and deprivations, and profit therefrom, cannot be subjected to the authority of any one nation. No nation can effectively regulate capital and force it to serve the common good.
“No single city-state can do so either.
"The common good of the people of this planet can only be protected by a global authority. Recognizing this truth, the city-states cannot take the Mandate of Heaven and right of sovereignty without willingly giving over a portion of that sovereignty to a global authority. The global authority with which I propose the city-states share sovereignty is a Federation of Cities.
"The city-states can succeed with a Federation of Cities where the nation-states have failed and will fail with the United Nations because the nation-states had sovereignty and would have to give up that which they possess in order for the United Nations to exercise sovereignty. What man willingly gives up power? The city-states do not have sovereignty, so for them to form the Federation and grant it part of the sovereignty, they would not be giving up power they had possessed. The power would be shared at the moment it was possessed.
"We know from what was just said that the nation-states will not willingly step aside and let the city-states have sovereignty; they will not willingly give up their power. No, when an elite has failed in its obligations to the people and forfeited its right to power, it will not lay down its power; it will fight for it and the power will have to be taken from that elite. How are the city-states to take the power from the nation-states, you ask?" A few heads nodded. They were indeed asking that very question.
"I direct you back to the beginning of this lecture: 68% of the world's population lives in cities, half of them in the 600 largest cities. Those 600 largest cities produce over 60% of the world's economy.
"The cities have the people. The cities create the wealth of the world. The cities have the power already." I let that sink in. "One city alone cannot stand against the nation-state, but all of the major cities in that nation? If all the world's largest cities said to the nation-states at one time, 'You have no authority over us. We do not consent to your government and you have no authority over our people', the nation-states would be powerless to impose their authority.
"I do not suggest that such a step can be taken today, or next year, or even five years from now. Much must be done to get to that point, but first is to accept the necessity and the rightness of it. I stand before you as a man of God and say that I believe it is God's will that all his people, all over his planet, be one family and come together to care each for all and all for each."
One world
One people
One love
One revolution
"Some of you, I know, are members of the Federation of Southeast Asian Cities. You have found common cause there and through the sharing of ideas and voluntary agreement been able to solve problems and help your cities." Nods and smiles evidenced the success of that Federation. "I propose that similar Federations be formed for the other regions of the world, and that a global Federation of Cities be formed. All of these would be formed along the same model as the Southeast Asian federation, where Mayors gather to share ideas and make such agreements as they deem appropriate. Establish an organizational structure. Develop the habit of meeting and discussing. To the national governments what is such a group? Mayors talking again." I shrugged. A chuckle spread across the room.
"Once a common purpose has grown out of familiarity, and once the peoples of our cities have grown used to the idea of the Federations and of common action, they can be formalized, where agreements between cities become enforceable. Once we acknowledge the ability to make enforceable agreements and grant the authority to enforce them to the Federations, they are one step away from possessing governing authority. As we prepare ourselves for the exercise of sovereignty as city-states, we are also preparing ourselves for the exercise of global sovereignty through the Federations.
"Of course myriad details remain to be worked out. But what I have laid out is the skeleton of a governing body for the future. We cannot continue as we are. We have a global climate, a global economy, global systems and global problems. These require global solutions and a global actor. At the same time, the bulwark against a high abstraction is local power. The abstract global and the real local check each other. Such a system can govern justly and effectively.
"Thank you."
They applauded. I was humbled and gratified. Then there was a hum of separate conversations. For the next twenty minutes I answered questions and fielded objections. Some left without comment, but most of the mayors stayed for at least a few minutes to parley on one or more points.
At the end, three of us were in the room. Empress Catherine of Yang City stood across from me, with Dash Spice at her side. Their smiles were warm. "I am very proud of you, Father Biaggi," Catherine said. She had refused my invitation to address me informally as Vincent. The Empress enjoyed formality, and it reinforced her humility, by granting to others the formality with which she was always addressed. "I will see that your Federations are formed."
Wow. My allergies flared up. I stood, and bowed. "Thank you, Empress. Thank you. I am honored at your confidence in my plan."
She laughed, almost a coquettish giggle. "You are right. Your plan is well conceived and logical. We cannot go forward in this system. The nation-states as you said have failed us and become instruments not of good government but of capitalist exploitation. I know many will say they always have been thus, but it has become in the last half century impossible for any thinking, aware person to deny. Nobody has known what to do." She pointed at me. "Until you."
I demurred. "The ideas are not mine. They are not new. Many thinkers have been talking about the rise of city-states since I was young. I just -"
She cut me off. "But you have been the first to speak of sovereignty - true sovereignty. And you have dreamed the vision of a global system and a realistic way of getting there."
I inclined my head. "Whatever truth there is to what you say, the credit all goes to God. He is the source of inspiration."
"As you wish," she replied. "And now I must make my way to my next meeting. I will begin working on the other Mayors right away, and I will have staff begin drawing up plans and documents." She bestowed a dazzling smile on me, and I almost believed in a Goddess. Then she turned to Dash. "Come," she commanded, then strode to the door.
Dash followed her. When she had turned away, he flashed me an irreverent grin. He waved as he walked out the door.
Talia was going to be so proud! And Darnell! Tonight was going to be amazing, I could just feel it.