It is December 20, 2257, my arrival a few months ago to what is left of this planet called earth, generated many concerns as an anthropologist, since I am one of the descendants of those who migrated to extraterrestrial colonies with the purpose of preserving the human species.

 

My first impression upon arriving on this planet was that of a desolate, desert-like place, with very high temperatures and where what the ancestors called "the ozone layer" is today only a legend. I remember the week after our arrival with my work team, we headed towards what the maps and GPS called the United States of America. Our surprise was immense when we found large desolate cities in which surely a large number of people were concentrated, but where today there are only millions of cars whose particularity is that they are all electric, none powered by fossil fuels.

 

Among our findings, we found that these cars were manufactured mainly in the United States, Europe and China. Until then, we did not understand why, if electric mobility was so good for the planet by reducing pollution and CO2 emissions, as well as reducing environmental and noise pollution, by no longer using fossil fuels, it had reached the point of extinguishing the human race and any form of life. We found the answer in battery and electric vehicle production plants. We were surprised to find that unlike the plants in the United States and Europe, those in China were precarious in terms of safety, predatory of environmental resources, the vehicles manufactured were of very poor quality, as were the batteries, and there were no adequate recycling mechanisms. 

 

The greatest damage to the planet was found in China, and as all the factories belonged to the State because it was a communist government, we went to the central government committee where we found the answer to all our questions. It was a huge and imposing building, full of chairs where the Prime Minister and his advisors were probably sitting, we were greeted by a voice coming from a computer created with artificial intelligence, which when asked what had happened on the planet answered us, that the struggle to obtain raw materials for the manufacture of batteries such as Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, Aluminum, among others, whose reserves were in South American countries, Africa and Russia, led to invasions and wars between countries for the control of these resources, breaking out a world war that escalated due to the environmental damage generated by the electric mobility industry, discovering that the environmental cost of producing batteries and vehicles was immensely higher than the use of fossil fuels, quickly generating disastrous climate changes on the planet, such as rainfall, droughts, growth of seas and oceans by thawing of the north and south poles, tidal waves, tsunamis and earthquakes. This uncontrollable environmental disaster generated chaos and despair in the world population and the leaders of China, Russia and The United States, in a joint declaration of common war, simultaneously activated all their reserves of atomic arsenal that completely wiped out humanity and any vestige of life. Ironically, electric power ended up wiping out the planet earth.

We can conclude that in the desperation to find sustainable alternatives, they did not take into account that instead of fighting for the world, the ambition and ego of the nations deteriorated their true intention, dragging them into a black hole that consumed them to the point of ending their existence. My name is Mason, anthropologist in charge of the "Terra" expedition, over and out.