Having started to write climate fiction eight years ago this really doesn't surprise me. I'm in the middle of a series and have moved from climate fiction into science fiction. I broadly research high strangeness as I continue with my characters and plot.
There is a lot of high strangeness mixed in with our demise through man-made climate change. For example the Navy and Airforce confirm the existence of UFOs. Now life on Venus has been confirmed - I've been studying and writing about this in my second book. What do we know about Mars and it's history? Who else is here with us, watching our infantile civilization as it struggles through adolescence. Who are they and what do they want or are we just animals in a zoo which they're studying. much like we study different species of biological being. Add this to the mix of dystopia you see around you and you'll really blow out your mind.
In a way we're executing one of the theories advanced by Fermi's Paradox perfectly. As we do so we're probably being watched. Some of the watchers with the hope we'll make it through like they did, and some not bothered because they're already getting what they want from the planet, perhaps even with world-wide governmental cooperation. Ergo human, animal and plant genetic material. And why would governments cooperate? Because they're outmatched in the weapons, scientific and technological department and they have no choice. If you've mastered faster than light travel, anti-gravity technology and oh so much more well we must look like ants.
Fermi among many other things believed Intelligent life self-destructs. Whether via weapons of mass destruction, planetary pollution, or manufactured virulent disease, and that it may be the nature of intelligent species to commit suicide, existing for only a short time before winking out of existence.
He also put forward the idea that the general population on Earth is deliberately not being contacted. On Earth, we have policies about contacting indigenous peoples; it's possible that the same thing could be happening with us. Just like in Star Trek, advanced alien societies may enforce rules that limit contact only to species that attain a lofty degree of technological or cultural evolution.
Are most of the advanced species of the universe not concerned if we disappear because we're just one more among many experiments in material and conscious life, which they oversee and participate in.
On the other hand perhaps a few are cheerleading for us and keeping their fingers crossed that we do build a new civilization from the ruins of this one. Perhaps who knows, like in my books, they might even decide to help us. The great cosmic battle advances!
