So, before I get into this, I must direct due credit to
@Godwinson, who more than anybody else was central to the development of this theory. I can make the the outcome fit into the realities of the setting, but I can't figure out how to make the outcome plausible without a more knowledgeable participant.
So! Global warming. Short version's at the bottom. To begin with, I'll summarize roughly how the conversation went.
We said:
Let us assume that the Collapse halts any organized attempts at halting the progress of global warming -- such as they are. It annihilates organized industry in North America, severely hinders it in China and Europe for many years, and in general causes chaos, but the upshot is that the people struggling to stand back up are doing so by any means available without concern for going green. Is that enough for things to have stalled out roughly where they are today, and remain salvageable with great investment?
No, not remotely. The planet's still fucked. Coastal regions have gone submersible.
How about if China decided to continue its trend of going hard into renewables? Would that do it?
I mean, it'd help, but it's not enough.
Oof, okay. What if we added Europe?
No. Honestly, almost negligible in the grand scheme of things.
Russia being on top of things to such a ludicrous extent kind of does swing things pretty hard, doesn't it?
Honestly, even Russia alone wouldn't be enough. Not unless they went all-in on restructuring from a petrostate, and took the Collapse as an opportunity to absolutely loot the world of intellectuals to assist. Even then, only maybe.
And they wouldn't have much motive to try, now that I think about it. Doesn't the world getting warmer make huge swathes of their country, well, livable?
Well...
Picture that you are a Chinese citizen living in Shanghai. The central government has collapsed. America has died. Europe is in chaos. India
despises you, and all your people, and has been an avowed foe for decades. Japan has gone imperialist again. The rest of Asia, in fact, generally is in agreement that you and yours should have as little ability to impact the course of international politics as possible. The world is on fire. The greatest power on Earth is Russia, under the command of its new Tsar. Everywhere else is on fire, collapsing, or directly in the sights of the seemingly-unstoppable titan that is the New Russian Empire. More to the point, Russia is nearby, stable, probably won't kill you, and probably the safest place on Earth.
It is with the world in this shape that the sea rises and swallows your home.
Where do you go?
Tsar Alexander IV of the New Russian Empire is, if nothing else, far-sighted. While he has made a career of exploiting and worsening global catastrophes to Russia's relative benefit, he is primarily concerned with things that leave others miserable and unable to resist him, while leaving himself unburdened. He fully intended, once he realized his immense relative strength, to take full advantage and emplace Russia as the global hegemon. He knew, and eagerly accepted,
exactly what that would entail him doing to the other great powers on the planet. He knew the intense chaos and hardship he would be imposing on others, and the relatively immense prosperity he would be lording over their heads. He even managed to successfully predict the general shape of things to come.
While he personally had little emotional investment in global warming, he was sensible enough to listen when scientists screamed, and he relished neither constant Siberian wildfires nor a flood of refugees from regions rapidly submerging into the oceans. Alexander looked at the future of the world, and he saw a game that
nobody would win, no matter how readily they were able to weather the immediate effects. And unlike the leaders of the late 20th century and the turn of the millennium, he knew that he would be
living in the world he created. It would be him that watched the world collapse, not temporarily in a way that could emerge restored and under Russian rule, but
permanently in a way that would leave him ruler of nothing but ashes. It would be
him trying to rule as Siberia burned, as the far reaches of his empire became unmanageable.
And thus, when he began to rebuild Russia as the rest of the world collapsed, Alexander IV decided that he would go down in history, no matter what else he did, as the man who saved the world, and also saved himself the biggest headache in history. As I said in Discord, "It can be his redeeming quality. He can have one." Even then, it came about for fundamentally selfish reasons.
And, furthermore, just Russia going all-in was not enough.
Let's trace the timeline. The Collapse happens. For various reasons, Russia collapses first, but Alexander -- former Russian military -- goes warlord and manages to come out on top.
Somehow -- and this is the story's unicorn, aside from the fundamental fact of being based on
Victoria at all -- Russia pulls out of the death spiral before any other major power.
Way ahead of time, in fact, to the point that it constitutes an almost insurmountable geopolitical advantage. Alexander has the above train of thought. He
does loot the shit out of the planet's intellectual resources and leads a massive effort in environmentalism. This includes renewable energy sources and some means of actively reversing the damage we've already caused that he manages to get nonproblematic and off the ground. And, of course, he continues his efforts at empire-building. That said, the cost of his initiatives is truly catastrophic. It is one of several reasons why he conquered his way merrily through ex-Soviet central Asia but couldn't get to Finland before Scandinavia got its shit sufficiently together to make it an acquisition that would be too tough to crack without a fight he didn't yet want. He just did not have enough to do everything he wanted, and paid the price. And even with this huge investment, once again,
Russia alone is probably not enough.
So, what else is going on in the world?
In China, IRL and in this timeline, the PRC has been going into renewables for years. The collapse of the international oil trade did not do much to reverse this trend, and for their last years, that is their focus. Frankly, given how things shake up, even once they reform they don't have easy or simple access to massive oil reserves. They remain focused on renewables. While they have little reason to be eager to step along in Alexander's footprints, it just makes sense by this point.
India is a Russian ally, and also in the danger zone for the effects of global warming. As has been depressingly typical in history, the first part is more a factor than the second. Alex puts the pressure on them, and they agree because hey, why not? Big guy up north is really into this stuff, and a Russia a day keeps the China away, so sure. Give us some kickbacks, Alex, and we'll build some Himalayan dams.
Europe? Well, they're not the biggest factor in this scenario, but they're in it, and while they're fervently opposed to Alexander, he makes a regular point of smearing in the international press anybody who puts in less than an effort than he does. And
fuck, despite all that Alexander has done, some of the effects of global warming are increasingly difficult to ignore. Scientists are shrieking that
no, it is not an elaborate play for PR on Alexander's part, he really is achieving something, and realistically he's the only reason the Netherlands aren't a
submarine. The issue has been
made fully in people's faces, now, and it's politically unhealthy for politicians to not help out when even
fucking Alexander is doing his part and then some. Europe, grudgingly and almost competitively, as though to show Alexander that he doesn't get to fucking outdo them, climbs aboard the train-
-and by
this point, we have Russia, China, India, and Europe all aboard the environmentalism train, North America out of the market entirely aside from the pittance which Victoria commands, Middle Eastern oil
still not back up and running thanks in large part to Alex making it his business to fuck up anybody trying to make that happen, and the rest of the world market at this point honestly has to look at the critical mass of green going on in Eurasia and start to bend. The effort is not unified, but it is intense. In and around the suffering and death of the Collapse, there is one speck of hope: the environment, at least, has halted its death spiral. The work is not
done, and things in fact still rest on a knife's edge. The next few years will be crucial. However, people have stepped up enough that the planet has not taken the final plunge.
That, after much discussion, is how I have decided to implement climate change in this quest.
To summarize: Alexander was convinced to swing hard into environmental solutions, largely, as ever, for self-serving reasons. India, his ally, came aboard. China was already on that path for unrelated reasons. Europe came aboard quite resentfully, but it's on. North America is out of the picture. The oil trade died in the Collapse and never really recovered anyway. Momentum took care of the rest from there. Russia, as a side effect of the colossal spending this took, is now in a moment of weakness — a good part of the reason why they lapsed in their global campaign of punching down.
Things have not deteriorated much since the modern day, but the crisis point is only a few years away. If current trends continue, the people of Earth will avert the big shift...but it is entirely possible for things to still go wrong. It all depends on if the current trends
do continue.
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