When it comes to terrifying dystopian realities, it’s hard to top our current world’s combination of extreme wealth and income inequality, with an impending ecological collapse that’s being entirely ignored by those in power. But it could get always get worse.

What if, for instance, the wealthy and powerful ruling elite of arguably the world’s last remaining superpower acknowledged the truth of the environmental disaster that faces the world, but decided they simply didn’t care? What if this small but powerful cabal of nihilists determined, after spending decades denying the problem and refusing to do anything about it, that it was now simply too late to act, and they would rather gobble up the world’s wealth and resources during humanity’s twilight so they can have the time of their lives before it all fell apart?

Terrifyingly, this appears to be the direction in which we’re heading.