When it was released nearly 30 years ago, Final Fantasy 7 was a haunting vision of the future, a world in which corporations endlessly stripped the planet bare to line their own pockets. Rabble eco-terrorists fractured throughout imposing urban centres ruled by tech conglomerates were framed as heroes while they blew up reactors polluting the planet, a daring approach for a flagship ‘90s RPG.
But this was the endgame of the climate crisis. The doomsday clock had struck zero, and the rag-tag team of scrappy Avalanche desperates were the only hope left. Of course, we’d root for them. As Barret said, “The planet’s dyin’” — I just never thought we’d approach that moment so soon.
Energy Is True Power In America
In the seminal 1997 Square Enix JRPG, the Shinra Electric Power Company, with its private military and president, have such a hold over Midgar that its mayor is rendered a mere puppet to uphold the facade of democracy. Former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg levied these same claims at Elon Musk, arguing that he is now at a crossroads in which “he can try and become a sort of political puppet master, going well beyond Trump, deciding who the next Republican candidate should be and the one after that”.
With Musk’s fingers in so many government pies, as well as the ability to halt federal funds and unilaterally shut down entire departments, an unprecedented amount of power is resting on the shoulders of a private, unelected billionaire. It’s an eerily similar future to that which Final Fantasy 7 warned of, where the rich took control of the government through their conglomerations to strip away the regulations designed to prevent individuals from a meteoric rise in power.
DOGE, the unrecognised government department run by Musk, has employees who range from just 19 to 24 years old and who were granted access to the Treasury and US Energy Department’s IT system, while senators were denied access to the building by a private security company. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the last two weeks as a “plutocratic coup”, while outlets like The Verge have begun labelling these the acts of “President Musk”, not Trump.
All the while Trump stokes global tensions with threats of annexing Denmark-owned Greenland. Supposedly this is in the name of national security, gaining a foothold in the Arctic, but as Forbes points out, Greenland is rich in natural rare earths, lithium, and cobalt, all of which are used to manufacture a range of modern technological equipment.
With Trump planning to tariff Taiwan microchips by as much as 100 percent in a bid to bolster the US’ own development of microchips, claims of ‘national security’ in Greenland — when Denmark and the EU have already approved US military bases in the region — feels more like misdirection. Indeed, this was the Shinra playbook, as they waged war on neighbouring country Wutai to install a power plant against its will.
Clean Energy Initiatives Are Being Shut Down
With billionaires holding all of the power and now pulling the strings of government, the stage is set. Shinra, with its puppet figurehead, and no regulation or oversight, began extracting mako at an alarming rate to use as fuel for its copious electricity needs, draining the planet of its literal lifestream. It’s a blatant allegory that forgoes any subtext to yell in our faces the truth of the climate crisis. We are destroying the planet with every drill.
The Republican motto, made Trump’s mantra during his campaign in 2024, was “Drill, baby, drill.” With a foothold in the Senate and Congress, Musk tearing down government bodies, the “chilling purge” of a dozen federal watchdogs, and executive orders cutting through bureaucracy and allowing unlawful acts to be passed without resistance, Trump is acting on that message right now with little pushback.
Trump plans to expand the drilling of crude oil, which is already at historic highs. He ordered the opening of American land to extract even more fossil fuels, began the process of leaving the Paris Climate Agreement (again), suspended clean energy development on federal land, and took a hard stance against windmills, because “they are made in China [and] they kill the birds”.
All of this is being done under the guise of Trump’s “energy emergency”, which he declared on his first day in office to unlock additional powers that allow him to promote energy development, though ominously without any mention of clean energy. This “emergency” also neglects, likely by design, the advent of generative AI, an incredibly controversial technology that the UN claims “takes a heavy toll on the planet” due to the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to power their data centres.
The continuing push into fossil fuels, with clear neglect for all clean energy, despite 2024 being the hottest year on record for the tenth year in a row, is incredibly alarming.
Throughout last year, we saw 27 climate disasters alone, from raging wildfires in California (which have already occurred again in 2025) to the displacement of half a million people in Brazil due to flooding. The climate crisis isn’t a future we can still avoid, it’s a terrifying reality that’s happening right now, and global superpowers like America need to take measures to mitigate the damage before it’s too late to begin reversing the effects. Instead, we’re seeing billionaires profit from the senseless push ever further into crude oil and fossil fuels, with Big Oil even spending $445 million on Trump’s re-election campaign. The planet’s dyin’.
After 30 Years, Final Fantasy 7 Is Here
Final Fantasy 7 was never subtle. The class divide was represented by the poor living in slums, while the elite resided in a floating city that left them lurking below like and alongside rodents. All the while, a monopolistic electric company drained the planet of its very life, with ungainly, monstrous reactors that polluted the air and poisoned anyone unfortunate enough to reside nearby.
An unfathomably rich company took hold of the government and turned Midgar into a techno-fascist regime, with a puppet figurehead mayor kept in ‘power’ to placate the masses. The horrors of the climate crisis were ingrained in the machinations of an unelected oligarchy, which is exactly what we’re seeing in America right now, as billionaires like Musk pay their way into the government and are now ripping apart the checks and balances that would otherwise prevent their rapid acceleration of power.
Shinra became ungovernable, and we are seeing that play out in real-time as we watch the gutting of organisations dedicated to mitigating the damage of climate change, the replacing of clean energy with unsustainable and harmful fossil fuels, and a widening class divide made worse through the pilfering of federal funds. In less than 30 years, we’re witnessing the dystopian future of Final Fantasy 7 with our own eyes.
- Released
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January 31, 1997
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes