New Taboos by John Shirley

migrating toward more protected areas.
    Oceans provide much of the world’s food. Global warming contributes to the acidification of the ocean, which adds to the attrition of fish stocks. Globally, fish supply 60 percent of the protein consumed by the human race, and we have already harmed fish stocks by destructive methods of fishing and pollution.
    Food stocks will be radically challenged as climate change increasingly damages agriculture—as it’s already doing in Africa. We can anticipate famines that make current food shortages seem like the good old days. And you think western nations are dealing with a lot of refugees now? They are a drop in the bucket.
    The social cost of all this will be brutally intimidating. With seven billion people on the Earth, we have about a billion going to bed hungry
right now,
with billions more people coming … And it’s been observed that the poorest people on earth contribute
least
to climate change but will feel its hand the
heaviest,
since they have the fewest resources with which to adapt and respond.
    The massive shifts of large populations will put unprecedented stress on infrastructure and social systems—especially food sources, water, and housing—and will doubtless result in military confrontations. A Pentagon study concluded that under pressure to find new sources of food and safe housing in harsh climate change conditions, some countries will find excuses to invade other countries.
    And of course there are other environmental crises arising. It’s becoming clearer that fracking to accesshydrocarbons does cause earthquakes, and we’re doing more and more fracking; this and the reduction in ice pressure on tectonic plates caused by global warming may well cause a great many more earthquakes. And don’t forget the
black winds
—toxic fronts of synergized pollutants capable of killing large numbers of people—quite possibly being formed in the upper atmosphere, like an aerial complement to that corresponding giant whirlpool of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. Then there’s the delightfully diverse soup of pharmaceuticals (along with other random industrial chemicals) we’re finding in aquifers and drinking water. We all know about drugs combining dangerously (“Don’t mix those two drugs, dude, bad news!”) but we’re combining hundreds of them randomly in our water. Sure, they’re somewhat diluted, but one wonders when some general, cumulative compound will develop, some drug mix of birth-control pill hormones, steroids, Prozac (one of the most common pollutants in water), antihistamines and antibiotics. What interesting collective neurological side effects might appear? The Romans had their leaded dinner plates …
    Still, the biggest threat is to food and shelter. And those who have access to resources, feeling threatened, will naturally coalesce defensively against those migrating to seek better conditions. Moneyed, technologically sophisticated elements of society will tend to withdraw from the increasing pressures of the masses of disenfranchised, into the safety of walled, highly protected enclaves, which will be in effect, if not in legal status, technocratic city-states.
    2.
    A percentage of privileged technocrats may well sink into the repellently self-indulgent decadence of virtual reality retreats, where they’ll be sequestered
both
physically and mentally.
Addiction
to social media, videogames, cellphones, and the internet is now a recognized phenomenon and one that has implications for our relationship to future tech. Its addictive capacity will only increase as its experiential quality improves.
    It’s strange—most of our technology is about extending our reach, but paradoxically, we’re in danger of a relationship to technology that actually cuts us off from one another. Cartoonists already caricature families who sit together talking to everyone but each other on their