Blue Shift – An Online Graphic Novel documenting our environmentally screwed future

Posted on July 11, 2011 by derek

From Blueshiftworld.com:

The year is 2061. Runaway climate change, more rapid than anyone predicted, has plummeted the world into environmental catastrophe. The American Great Plains is a parched dustbowl from the Rockies to the Mississipi. Europe is gripped by a new Ice Age in the absence of the Gulf Stream. Rising seas have transformed California’s Central Valley into a shallow inland sea, and drowned New Orleans and Venice. Coastal cities such as New York huddle behind great sea walls. A gigantic tropical storm called Leviathan rages endlessly off the Gulf of Mexico. Nations engage in bitter war over water and fuel. All told, over half the Earth’s population has perished in the last forty years.

Amid this tragic backdrop, a new kind of human has begun to emerge: the Elohim, also known as Eli or Blueshift. The Eli possess startling physical and psychic abilities beyond the human pale. They represent either the last hope of humanity…or its replacement.

Yup, it’s a graphic novel about the Sh*t Hits the Fan scenario, the fundamental premise is that we didn’t listen.

From Blueshift’s blog:

The science of global warming, a.k.a. man-made global climate change, is well-settled, at least at the big picture level.  As with many other models, like evolution, the devil–and virtually all the scientific papers dealing with it–lies in the details.  You won’t find serious papers taking positions on whether global warming is happening any more than you’ll find serious scientific papers debating whether evolution is happening.  Most of the papers that do try to take a position against global warming come from people whose meal ticket is paid by petrochemical companies or other lobbyists with a stake in preventing or delaying the kinds of economic changes we need to make.  It’s kind of an old story.  For most of human history, people make fundamental change only when pushed to the brink.

In Blueshift, that’s an ongoing reality.  People have just given up.  There’s less effort to find alternatives.  Instead, shale oil products and new coal-derived chemical fuels see wide use.  People who have, use like crazy.  People who don’t have take menial jobs working for people who do.  If they’re lucky.  Not only is Nero fiddling while Rome burns, but he’s doing it in a drunken frenzy.

Visit www.blueshiftworld.com to read the first 2 chapters, and for more info (there’s quite a bit to read about Climate Change and the fate of our world).