The Digital Civilizations Interviews

Corporations neither really minded the general move towards ever-tighter control of the Internet that the London bombings finally made possible, since loud opposition by greying netheads was no longer considered legitimate. Elsewhere, outside the confines of the world’s 200 richest conurbations, things did not go as smoothly. Shortly after an explicitly US-staged coup replaced Ve¬nezuela’s Huge Chavez by a friendlier, Harvard-educated ruler in 2016, Russia took armed control of Azerbaijan’s oilfields; while the EU, more carefully but just as decisively, provided the necessary help to the groups who finally toppled the waning mullah power in Iran. OPEC’s power was more or less destroyed. Two markets for oil coexisted: bilateral secured long-term agreements provided ma¬jor economies with reasonably prices oil, while international markets for fossil fuels remained outrageously expensive.

Climate change was also beginning to produce devastating consequences. In 2016, after the Philippines was devastated by its third level 5 typhoon in 3 years, the EU and a group of corporations jointly organized a major recovery effort which made history for two reasons. First, it was the first time a go¬vernmental entity officially mounted a major operation of this kind in conjunction with private corporations. Second, there were counterparts of the Philippine side: Its government had to commit to in¬vesting on preventive measures (and European technology) against future ca¬tastrophes, but also to open its markets wider to European products, to commit to cleaner and softer growth and to enforce intellectual property treaties.

Having invested heavily in energy technologies as well as in climate-related ca¬tastrophe detection and recovery, the West began using its technology as a bar¬gaining tool for those countries who suffered most from climate changes.

High energy costs, consumer defiance and boycott campaigns, pollution and climate problems, began to weigh ever more hea¬vily on emerging economies. Some of them continued to grow in a hectic and altogether much slower way; others went into decline amidst social unrest and political instability, which in turn deepe¬ned the problems. Foreign investment into these economies be¬came scarcer and came with conditions. The largest third world metropolises plunged into anarchy, while their population kept growing. Several of China’s new industrial cities built at the turn of the XXIst century fell into disrepair and, due to the low quality of construction, quickly degraded.