ENVIRONMENTAL DECAY

Environmentalists and most rational people will agree that our current environmental practices are unsustainable. We are consuming too many natural resources, burning too many fossil fuels, cutting down too many trees, and having too many children. We are slowly devastating the environment. But this devastation could increase at an exponential rate if nuclear warfare were put on the table. And it seems that our current president is very interested in putting nuclear war on the table. Scientists warn that nuclear weapons are the Earth’s greatest threat. Detonating just 0.3% of the world’s arsenal would wreak havoc on the entire world: “tens of millions of people would die, global temperatures would crash … the ozone layer, which protects the surface of the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, would be depleted by 40% over many inhabited areas and up to 70% at the poles” (Jha). Such drastic depletion of the ozone layer would cause global temperatures to skyrocket, rapid melting of the polar ice, and rising sea levels. If we engaged in nuclear war, our world would begin to look like that of Philip K. Dick’s dystopia far sooner than we expected.

 

In Do Androids Dream, decades of nuclear war have destroyed the environment and made Earth nearly inhabitable. Prolonged exposure to the atmosphere leads to the development of genetic abnormalities and, eventually, death. Most species of animals were wiped out, so owning a real one—as opposed to one that’s electric—is seen as a status symbol, perhaps because it is a connection to the distant past; a relic of a time when the world wasn’t a toxic wasteland. The “regulars”—that is, those that are physically unaffected by the environmental conditions—immigrated to Mars. Seeing as we don’t have the technological wherewithal to colonize Mars yet, we should probably lay off the nukes.

 

The world of Do Androids Dream could very well be Earth’s future if political, social, and environmental conditions aren't changed. And if our president’s twitter doesn’t cause World War Terminus and wipe us all out.