The Environment

In order to protect the environment, the world had to make drastic changes in a short space of time, but some countries (such as the USA, India, China and USSR, the "industrial giants") have barely adapted and are struggling to survive in what is essentially a wasteland. The efforts of environmentalist countries to protect their environment are often thwarted by the industrial giants, especially if they are neighbours, which has nearly led to war on several occasions.

Nevertheless, the world did manage to recover from the brink of environmental collapse due to global co-operation on a scale never seen before (and would never be seen again).

The Sea
The countries on the Mediterranean Basin came together in 2050 to build the Gibraltar Dam, which protected the Mediterranean against rising sea levels coming from the Atlantic.

In 2065, with the advent of nanorobot technology, most developed countries banded together to complete the "Big Freeze Project" which was essentially a giant freezer on both poles designed to drastically slow the rate at which they melted, allowing the world much more time to put in place defences to protect against rising sea levels. This was continuously maintained and upgraded until, by 2100, the rise in sea levels was entirely reversed and the freezers had to be partly turned off to avoid incurring an ice age.

Meat
The production (and therefore consumption) of meat dropped to about 10% of what it was in 2020 by 2070, following a UN resolution. Meat quickly became an expensive rarity, except for in the USA, which did not agree with the resolution and maintained its meat industry. They managed to keep the industry sustainable by doing away with most laws and regulations to do with the industry, and developed a system by about 2090 where nutrients could be fabricated and injected into heavily genetically modified versions of the animals that are now little more than large blobs of flesh. China, after being taken over by The Machine, also adopted this system. The advent of lab-grown meat in 2110 saw an increase in global meat consumption, and as the technology developed meat once again became readily available for much of the developed world, entirely grown in labs without the need for real animals. China switched to this system by 2180, although the USA is still struggling to adapt.

The fish meat industry remained largely the same, except the majority of production was moved to farms, following the extinction of several major species and the near-extinction of most others due to overfishing and environmental collapse following a rise in sea temperatures.