Crisis Point

Chapter One;
2013

Every day humanity drifts itself closer and closer to its inevitable demise. It's what we do, and what we don't do, that makes us susceptible to the worst things we've ever imagined. Severe storms, drought, flood, famine, disease… death and destruction at global proportions. Tsunamis bigger than Boxing Day 2005, hurricanes the size of Katrina hitting every few weeks, diseases that make TB look tame and Polio look harmless. 30 billion people living on this planet. Overcrowded cities, cars and pollution, and the ever-increasing hole in the ozone layer. Now picture the water levels rising. Whole countries disappear. The low-lying regions become oceans. The medium-lying regions become swamps and windswept lands. The hills and mountains we once imagined were so high go from mountains to molehills. The land isn't sinking into the sea… the sea is coming to us. Islands are lost, seaside cities go under and a land that once had enough room for 30 billion now has only room for half that. 30 billion people with only enough land for 15. Cities become even more crowded. The price of housing increases. Farming land becomes homes. There is no longer room for livestock and plants… a concrete jungle where there was once green. And then… the stock market collapses. The price of the dollar plunges, stocks go into meltdown. It's a recession like no other, and with no money to bail out the banks, a depression is on the way. Banks foreclose on mortgages, homes are lost, and people are left to die in the street. The hungry and the poor become a mass more terrifying than anyone you will ever meet. The divide between rich and poor becomes more like a cavern… and the poor severely outnumber the rich. It's war in a world already torn apart by humanity. But now, instead of man vs. nature, it's man vs. man. Rich vs. poor. The struggle to survive.

… [the] response to global warming is classic: Deny, Delay, Divide, Dump and Dupe… to DENY the problem, DELAY solutions, DIVIDE the opposition, DUMP their technologies on the developing world and DUPE the public through massive PR campaigns… [soon] adversely affected verse those who gain convenience; rich versus poor ...

Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice
by Kenny Bruno, Joshua Karliner & China Brotsky, CorpWatch

This isn't a what-if anymore. This is the life I live in, the life I probably helped make. This is life in Australia in 2013. It's been five years since we saw the first signs of global warming – snow in December. We passed it off as a freak phenomenon, but it didn't stop. It snowed through Christmas, even in non-snowing areas. A white Christmas. Children were overjoyed. Finally the New Year came and it warmed up like normal. Christmas – 13 degrees. Four days later – 36 degrees. By the first week of January it had reached 45 degrees on the coast. The east coast of Australia was sweltering… Melbourne – 43, Canberra – 45, Sydney's coast – 45, Sydney's west – 48, Brisbane – 47, Cairns – 50. Neither extreme helped the people suffering under a recession. We thought life couldn't get any worse, but it did.

February 2010, an explosion at a United Arab Emirates oil plant took out a year's worth of the black gold we were already running low on. That same year Prime Minister Kevin Rudd passes the bill to convert most of the Navy's ships to nuclear, to keep up with America. It was the best idea he ever had. It would keep the Navy in the ocean well after the oil died out. Meanwhile, the oil plants of the Middle East came under threat again in September when a second one was blown up. It was no longer an accident – this was an act of terrorism. People were scared of what people could do, so much so that they ignored the damage the explosion had done to the atmosphere. The ozone layer, our only protection from a very damaging sun, took the brunt of the disaster. The hole over Antarctica, at that time the size of Tasmania, grew to be more like the size of the Northern Territory. It was horrible, but with Antarctica out of the sun's rays for most of the year, people weren't too worried. October 2010, another tsunami off the coast of Indonesia. The early warning system installed after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2005 saved many people. Actual death toll is still uncertain, but estimated to be only about 300 people. Although smaller than 2005, the October 2010 tsunami was big enough to, according to astronomers, knock the planet's alignment off by one-tenth of a degree. Not a lot, but enough to expose Antarctica to another month of sunlight. The continent began to melt even faster than before.

January 2011. Average east coast temperatures for summer hit 47, including eight straight days of 50 degrees-plus days. They end with wild storms that destroy 800 homes in Queensland and kill seven people. Meanwhile, in Canberra, bushfires ravage the nation's capital. They threaten Parliament House, but are able to be beaten back by a lucky wind that turns the fire back on itself. It burns itself out. A good thing too as Canberra's dam is almost empty. Its desalination plant is nearly finished. It switches over to desal in May 2011. The dams are empty. It hasn't rained in a year. It's still raining in Melbourne. In fact, it hasn't stopped for almost six months. It's rained when it's hot, cold, windy and still. The rain just never stops. The low-lying regions go underwater. Necessary crops in the Gippsland region are lost. Homes are flooded. The Australian government, who have already declared Queensland and Canberra states of emergency, can't cope. They can't offer the people of Victoria any support. The state rallies, calls a state election. The Labor Government in power is thrown out and the Liberals, who promise action, are voted in. But there's nothing they can do. The people of Victoria, their crisis deemed lesser than those of QLD and the ACT are left high and… well certainly not dry.

2012. The sea levels rising have finally been noticed. In Sydney Harbour the sea splashes over the walls that once held it back in the Royal Botanical Gardens. The NSW State Government adds another three centimetres and say everything is okay, ignoring the fact that their rise indicates the sea has risen three centimetres as well. It's rising faster and with more ferocity than anyone expected. On the north coast, a young boy is washed off rocks at Harrington and dragged out to sea. His family are shocked. For the last four years, they say, they've come to Harrington and the boy has been able to fish off those rocks without even getting wet. The boy is lost forever and put down as another death at the hands of the ocean. In Brisbane an old wharf is washed away by strong waves and wind. The local council put it down to it being old, but the wharf wouldn't have come down had it not been for the waves being higher and harder than ever before. But it isn't only the east coast. Down on the south coast, the last of the Apostles falls into the sea. The waves have been eating them away with ferocity for the last two years. It was inevitable they say. But like everything that's happened so far, it all could've been stopped.

December 2012. The Sydney to Hobart yacht race is cancelled due to bad weather. The A-League football season is also put on hold. It's snowing again in Sydney. NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell promises that Sydney will remain strong throughout everything. The harbour water now spills over the jetty at Circular Quay when the boats come in. Half of Manly Beach has gone underwater. Bondi is half the beach it used to be and tourism is down. No one can fly anymore. There's no oil left in the world. Sydney will not survive the downturn. A city built on sunny beaches, tourism and friendly people it can no longer offer these things. Tourism companies are closing down. In December, his government broke and unable to offer a solution, Premier O'Farrell resigns. NSW is called into an election. Only one man runs. Labor wins with a landslide victory – 100%. That man is Morris Iemma. He has no plans, he has no competition and he has no way of getting us out of this.

And so 2013 begins.

And this is where my story begins.

This is the story of one little patrol boat in the Australian Navy. The little patrol boat that could. And how it tried to save the world.

This is the HMAS Hammersley and it's my patrol boat.

My name is Lieutenant Commander Nikki Holiday, Commanding Officer of the HMAS Hammersley, but you can call me Nav. I'm 32, married with a daughter named Cassie, and finally doing the job I always wanted. Too bad my captaincy takes place in the middle of hell…