{If this has not been done before...}
Since this is sci-fi/ fiction, you can play it loose.
What about letting Wolfram be correct in his ‘new kind of science’ that natural selection is the not the fundamental cause of complexity in biology.
Next let some little virus thing exist which stops ‘it’ cold. In everything with DNA. (Let the ‘virus’ be really, really well hidden. To start with.)
Let’s say the clock starts ticking at around 6000 years ago. (Maybe a stray volcanic rock from Mars. Perhaps scientists re-discover the bug in a rock brought back from a Mars mission, as the story trigger.)
So what happens next?
Everything starts to fall apart. Or rather, started to fall apart, as scheduled, biblically. Then today, we get the disasters: tipping points, etc.
Exactly how this would all go would make for some interesting speculation. What would happen if evolution just - stopped. 6000 years ago. {Grin.}
If you could get this part right, you should have a really good book.
You could link things like climate change to it.
Or you could go smaller, and let a few critical critters start to buy the farm. (Plankton, the flu, etc.)
Since it would then turn out that there has been no evolution for the biblical period, you get a radical upswing in, well, radicalism. Like really heavy religiosity. Like attend church, or your house gets burned down - for your own good. Viva the friendly, peaceful, neighbourhood inquisition.
You get politicians who do nothing because the threat is not immediate enough; as always.
And the scientists running around screaming that we are all going to die. Must act now! Save the Earth now! (Nice reversal, there.)
This should still classify as sci-fi, methinks.
Unless I'm missing something. Even so, you could then write certain things out; in this parallel world, certain things just never happened. Which could be an alternate, and perhaps much more interesting story trigger.
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