Heaven On Earth

Global warming, exacerbated by the output of greenhouse gasses and the destruction of the rainforests.

They took their planes around the world to to have meetings in expensive hotels to come up with plans to rectify the situation and told people to use less power, less resources, and tighten their belts. Then they flew back and took their expensive petrol-driven limousine home, where they lived in opulent comfort with their heated swimming pools and stables funded by the taxpayer.

They ignored the proposals put forward by ecological organisations to focus on renewable energies such as solar, wave, hydroelectric and wind power, although the deteriorating climate change tornados, hurricanes and cyclones were becoming far more common.

However, this had distracted the scientific community until one group noticed something that they thought must be a mistake in their calculations or instrumentation.

The Earth was getting closer to the Sun. Further investigations showed that all planets in the Solar System were getting closer to the sun. Some thought the Sun was getting bigger but that was not the case.

Further investigation revealed the extent of the problem.

What was once a circular/elliptical orbit was now a very long spiral, and this was true for every planet. They were all now on a trajectory to hit the Sun.

For the Earth, it was projected that we had around ten thousand years before the catastrophe happened, but when the inner planets hit that might affect the Earth's orbit once more and even the atmosphere that sustained humanity.

The first to hit would be Mercury and that was projected to happen in fifty years.

Religious groups ranged from welcoming the forthcoming Rapture (even though it was probably thousands of years away) to blaming every minority group for bringing down God's wrath upon the Earth. Many politicians preached that it was a hoax and it wasn't going to happen.

The only certainty was that it was going to get much hotter, with all the side effects that would bring.

There was talk about building a space fleet to evacuate the human race, but, in reality, there was nowhere to go, and it was likely that only a few hundred could be taken.

As always humanity forgot and turned their attention to watching television and making money.

After all, it wouldn't affect them or their children or grandchildren.

And then Mercury hit, after two years...

That caused changes in the Earth's atmosphere, and the Earth's spiral tightened. Scientists recalculated and there were maybe a thousand years until the Earth fell into the Sun. They also did not know what would happen when Venus hit, because Earth was next. The timeline had been slashed.

Heaven would hit Earth one day, but no one would see that because all life on Earth would have been burned by the ever nearing Sun

Addendum:

Take a listen and watch the included video. It is both educational and funny and si sung by Stephen Hawking.