The Situation Room, October 2039: the president and vice president, and other high civil and military officials are following the damage from Hurricane Monica, Hurricane Nicholas, and Hurricane Ophelia, as well as Southern California where "millions of people are under mandatory evacuation orders with essentially nowhere to go because of a maelstrom of raging wildfires."

Fortunately, the US no longer needs to worry greatly about Russian and China, which have been hit by their own human-caused climate disasters.

In 2019, important US military bases have already been ruined by storms and threatened by wildfires.

Civilian life will be in constant danger from these events, too. It will not be easy to grow as much food as we produce today.

The soundest policy would be for the US, China and Russia to join together now and force all countries to join them in rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is foolish to wait until the disaster makes it impossible to delay any longer.