Short Story – TOTAL GLOBALIZATION
Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com
At the end of the first decade of the twenty first century the economical crisis spread almost all over the world. Power of great economical entities: the European Community, USA, China, and also India was lingering. Not a long time before that Africa had finally gotten rid of a mark of economical abuse from earlier centuries, and some African countries started to develop. Nevertheless, the crisis stopped that process.
A great effort of economists allowed to slow down the process of decay of the world economy, but they were not able to stop it.
In March 2075 the world oil resources were over, but even ten years earlier the oil had been so expensive that people changed gasoline cars to electric means of transportation. They were slower but much cheaper.
Surly it was the best available solution which doesn’t mean it was good. Trucks could not move faster than fifty kilometers per hour which made the process of logistics last about twice longer than usual. Bigger shipments were often transported with trains, but the railway infrastructure was too little developed to meet all the needs. For ten years companies had to choose either slow electric transport or faster transport in gasoline trucks… five times more expensive. However, the mentioned 2075 brought the end to such a dilemma, as there was no oil anymore. The side effect was that no driver was to receive a excessive speed ticket anymore.
The United Nations called the World Energy Summit in Beijing in June 2076 to deal with the problem.
The chairman Park Yae Song said in the opening:
“Ladies and gentlemen! The world is facing a serious problem today, a problem which requires us to be united more than ever…
…We must have not only a talk forum which, please don’t find it offensive as it’s true, which United Nations has become in the beginning of this century. As our summit continues, I will keep trying to convince you either to give more power, the political power to the United Nations, or to establish a new global government. European Union has the greatest experience in the latter solution. I believe we could extend the model of European Union to the whole world…”
Park Yae Sang’s suggestion had to be considered in the aspect of energy. Few days later Igor Cavalera from Brazil was speaking about a possible solution.
“As the region of the Middle East is no longer the energetic center of the world, this center needs to be moved. I’d like to propose to move it west. Which energy is more pure than the sun energy? Where is there more sunshine than on Sahara? If we create a global government, as the chairman Park Yae Sang suggested, it could control this investment. The huge desert, which has been wasteland till now, will become an important economic region…
I think that the global government should have more than five hundred members. However, we should not exceed the number of one thousand to ensure the government work efficiently. Maybe one hundred per each continent would be good. Of course I mean excluding Arctica and Antarctic. That would make six hundred members. It’s a pretty big number, but they will rule the whole world.”
The idea of the global government was significantly forced by the United States. After two centuries of Arabic control over the greatest resources of oil, Americans didn’t want them to own the huge power plant on Sahara. Even though Americans controlled Iraq for more than a decade in the beginning of the twenty first century, they gave it up during Obama’s presidency.
Americans informed the representatives of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara that they would block any attempt of Arabic control over the power plant. Of course they did it in a gentle, diplomatic, and moreover informal way.
All eleven Sahara countries joined their efforts, as they felt a threat of losing their land in exchange for nothing, or for too little…
The next day, the President of Egypt was speaking.
“Toady all the countries of the desert are speaking one voice. You want to build the power plant on on the territory of our Sahara and take away our land. The area of 9.4 million square kilometers which you find a wasteland, is however our home, dwelt not only by our people, but also by many nomadic tribes, from which the Tuaregs are the most numerous. The mighty Sahara is the land of our fathers, beginning from ancient pharaohs…”
He had been speaking for a long time before he came to the point, to their demands.
“All our countries are speaking one voice today.” he said again. “If we are about to give away our land, we must have additional seats in the global government. We will agree only if we are allowed to assign two additional people from each of our countries to the government. They will be guardians of Sahara, and will provide appropriate exploitation of the desert!”
And so a political market began. China, India, European Community, and USA could not allow to have less representatives in the government than so far meaningless countries of Northern Africa. Russia was another political player. This huge country had been having demographic problems since World War 2. In the beginning of the twenty first century only two third of citizens of Russia were Russians, and ethnic minorities like Ukrainians, Tatars, and others were the rest of the society. For the following seventy years of the twenty first century another phenomena could be observed. Migration analysts called it the law of diffusion. Chinese were ten times more than citizens of Russia so they started to infiltrate the border despite the migration regulations in both countries.
In 2075 there was slightly more than fifty per cent Russians in Russia. This fact was used to give few less places in the government to Russia than the other empires got.
Brazil was also given extra places in the government, as this country owned Amazon, the lungs of the world.
England and France claimed for extra power, but did not get it. They were too weak countries in the second half of the twentieth century.
Thus after about half a year of negotiations a new global government was established with the total number of six hundred and sixty six members.
__THE END__
PS. Try to guess what happened further… :)
