At the very beginning of the 21st century an altered natural order competes with the cities that dominate it. Amidst seemingly endless wealth and splendor are squalor and an undercurrent of discontent.
Once solid edifaces seem hollow and....
....august monuments no longer assure us. 
The very symbols of our wealth and power lose their spell over us. 
We have somehow forgotten the earth's reliable sustenance and meddle foolishly with its natural systems we depend on. With full scale corporate and industrial farming....
....and genetic modification of our food we begin to alter the very nature of nature itself.
The great religions are at odds with the natural world, and each other.
....and in this time of great confusion and anxiety they become rigid and more dogmatic.
Huge swaths of the verdant earth are stripped of their 'resources' and abandoned.
The natural world is consumed by teeming cities....
....which lose their once vaunted economic vitality.
Sustainable growth and economic 'progress' declines steeply
Some question the viability of our social and economic systems. Good people who foresee the coming calamity are ridiculed, and greed itself is celebrated. 
What follows predictably are dwindling meager resources....
....hard rock, and 'always the wind'.
We collectively hope for a time of revelation.
Few realized at the time....
....focused as we were in solving the formidable problems we ourselves have created....
....a paradigm shift is occurring, 
....and in the end, "the earth reclaims it".