Too many trees died in the Amazon— billions and billions of them— and the planet lost its buffer against global warming. In the United States climate change denial was completely swept away by the late 2020s when the droughts grew longer and the storms more severe. There were heat waves and heavy downpours on a scale North America had never known. Drought ravaged the Southwest resulting in the beginning of a mass migration north and away from the coasts. Eventually many coastal cities were entirely deserted due to rising sea levels. However, New York remained a symbol of national strength and fl ood barriers were erected to protect the city from aggressive storm surges. In Canada too, certain regions were drying up while others were the victims of massive fl oods. Scientists through-out the continent began plans to divert major rivers to areas starving for rain and to construct gigantic dams to contain runoff from rain in mountains that they knew would soon stop freezing. Near the end of the 2020s a fascist-leaning Canadian government ill-equipped to deal with the constant fi res raging in the west and host of other environmental disasters, provoked mass protests that led to enormous unrest.
