The Ice Age Challenge

Book excerpt: The Ice Age Challenge refers to the challenge that we face globally to create a new foundation for living when the coming Ice Age climate shuts down most of the world's agriculture, possibly 100 to 150 years from now. The novel is the first part of the second episode of the series, The Lodging for the Rose, an eight-part science-fantasy centered on universal love, by Rolf A. F. Witzsche. - We truly are in a race against time, the greatest race since the dawn of man, 'racing' to create the technologies, economies, finances, politics, and social cultures that enable us to shift agriculture into efficient indoor facilities in order to protect our food production in the coming Ice Age environment. The Earth has been in an Ice Age for 1.8 million years, interspersed by the occasional warm period, like the present one that is ending in spite of global warming. The necessary infrastructures for survival are technologically feasible, but will we empower ourselves to create them? That appears to be less certain. It seems that we have been put in race without the skills for it. But then, don't we have the potential to be fast learners? In the course of exploring the question the novel touches on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Aryan invasion in historic India, the face of Islam, the fascist holocaust, depopulation, global warming, nuclear fusion power, indoors agriculture, and principles of marriage, sex, culture, and science.