United Nations of Earth

The United Nations of Earth was an interplanetary government operating in the Sol system during the 21st century. The agency was credited with solidifying humanity's interplanetary expansion; securing humanity's home planet Earth for the foreseeable future; and uniting most of humanity under a single banner.

The agency was established in 1945 after a destructive war on Earth had ended. The agency was gradually restructured into the Union of Sol between 2096 and 2100.

Peace in our time
The United Nations was formed after two catastrophic wars swept across Earth in the 20th century. Following the second of these wars, the various nation-states of Earth declared that a intergovernmental organisation could help prevent further wars and help further develop the Earth for all humanity. Its initial mandate lay with global peacekeeping, but expanded to include cultural, scientific, and economic development.

In its first few decades, the organisation was often paralysed from accomplishing much by the ideologial divide that the nationstates of Earth found themselves in. While it faces various failures, it was still considered to be an laudible effort in reducing international conflict. As of the start of the 21st century, the United Nations started taking a more active role in its duties as the nation-states of Earth faced more and more international issues.

Saving a dying planet
As humanity began to colonise their moon Luna and their neighbouring planet Mars in the early 2030's both for scientific advancement and the fear of extinction due to the rapidly increasing effects of industrial climate change, a new scramble for power and security took place between the nationstates of Earth. With plummeting biodiversity, massive worldwide desertification and deforestation, depletion of critical and strategic resources, worldwide harvest failures and food shortages, and massive migration waves, the previous world order was tumbeling further down with every passing day. While still somewhat paralysed from the limitations of its executive structure, the United Nations provided a platform and a banner for nation-states to bundle their efforts in order to secure food, protection, and critical resources. As of such, the United Nations was given extensive funding and authority for its cultural, scientific, and economic duties. Still, the world's needs were far greater than the organisations capabilities, and for a few decades, the world was thus burning down.

By the early 2050's, most governments of the planet were crippled by the worldwide famines and the partial collapse of the global trade network. After a coordinated worldwide revolt, many governments in Eurasia, North Africa, and the America's were forced to release a lot of their power and assets to a reformed United Nations of Earth that would and could take singular action against the many problems that troubled humanity. Also around this period, Humanity had established self-sufficient outposts on both Luna and Mars that attracted many colonists trying to escape Earth.

With this newfound power and reluctant support of most of the planet's population and economic power, the United Nations of Earth began to aggresively push preservation and reclamation of the Earth's biosphere by constructing massive nuclear energy plants, renewable energy sources along the coasts of UNE-affliated countries, planting or replanting massive area's of forest, and repopulating near-extinct species of flora and fauna. Aside from ecological restauration, the UNE also focused on sustainable economic restructuring to curtail megacorporations and various industries to roam around freely and further damage the fragile ecosystem.

These campaigns did come at the cost of curtailed and controlled market systems, as the available resources could not all be converted to consumer goods and amenities. While the planet was in serious unrest and civilian uprising due to the impaired living conditions and curtailed social welfare, some serious progress was made to preserve the planet's habitability. The now fully capable UNE-peacekeeping forces kept the population in line with military intervention and public disciplining. More and more nation-states of Earth handed over autonomy to the United Nations of Earth to gain access to its quickly recovering economic power and to benefit from the renewable global energy grid and standardised transportation grids.

Despite its benefits and rapid progress, many of the old governments tried to reclaim their former power and autonomy back from the UNE. While true national autonomy was never fully granted, many cultural, social and infrastructural responsibilities were granted to areas with democratic governance in order to reduce the bureaucratic stress that the UNE had to deal with.

Due to the aggresive preservation campaigns, the effects of climate change were halted at last by the 2080's. The damage was still done, and Earth still had an unstable biosphere, but Humanity and the remaining flora and fauna species were saved for now. It would still take decades before the planet could revert to an pre-industrialisation environment.

The exodus into space
The United Nations of Earth did not only consolidate power on Earth, but also declared itself the governing body of all established extraplanetary satellites, space stations, assets, and outposts on Luna and Mars during the 2060's. With little choice, the few thousand humans offworld had to accept the UNE's terms, although not without some resentment. One of the UNE's first actions was cleaning up the orbital sphere around Earth, using several laser-satellites to steer debris into Earth's atmosphere to burn up. After a major asteroid impact in 2067, the UNE also launched a extensive sentinel program with spotter-satellites and orbital defenses.

With Earth recovering and secured, the UNE turned its attention to the potential riches on Luna, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the Jupiter planetary system. These places were now becoming accessible due to new developments in propulsion technology, namely the nuclear fusion powered plasma thruster. Luna and Mars were the first targets of the human space exodus, as these places had developed rudimentary self-sufficient colonies over the past decades. With enormous support coming from Earth, these places were bustling with opportunity and adventure, which attracted millions to emigrate away from Earth.

During the conquest of the Asteroid belt in the 2070's, an unexpected discovery was made: the exotic material Qwerrium, which could create spatial distortions that could hypothetically be used to create faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion techniques. The Earth Expansion Vessel Program was launched by the United Nations to develop vessels that could make use of this discovery. The EEV-Program received nearly limitless funding and resources, as faster-than-light propulsion technology could deliver the stars, an ancient dream of humanity.