Blackmail Earth

by Bill Evans

  No coincidence there, thought Jenna.

  “Some Agency models predict four hundred thousand extra deaths from those extra wars in just the next twenty years. And none of us should think that we’ll be able to write those wars off as ‘just another African tragedy’ because the carnage will happen in the world’s most critical oil- and mineral-rich regions. Think of it: civil wars waged around the world’s biggest oil spigots. It’s happened before, and it’s going to happen a lot more in the future.”

  The vice president held up a document from the stack in front of him. “This is the actual CIA report. It says we’ll risk being buried by defense spending because countries all over the world will be in open conflict.” He read from the report, “‘Nations will engage in armed conflicts over rapidly diminishing arable land, because of drought, floods, windstorms, and rising oceans; rapidly diminishing fresh water; rapidly diminishing food; and rapidly diminishing oil supplies.’” Percy looked up. “The Agency says we’re in for an unprecedented period of what it calls ‘social and climate chaos.’ So we must consider all our options.”

  Jenna put down her pen. She’d planned to take notes but she’d already written the book from which the vice president could have been quoting.

  “Most of you have highly specialized knowledge. A few of you, like our well-known colleague, Ms. Jenna Withers, are highly educated generalists, if I do you no disfavor by saying so, Ms. Withers.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Hey, me, too,” Senator Higgens chimed in. “I’m all about generalities,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh that drew smiles from most of the people at the table.

  Senator Higgens was a big woman with an incongruously lean, pretty face. A “table date,” the network’s Pentagon correspondent once called her. Jenna had asked what he meant. “Back in the day, she’d look great in a restaurant, as long as you couldn’t see her from the waist down.”

  Jenna had bristled at his remark and turned away. Remembering the exchange softened her to Senator Fossil Fuels.

  Since losing the Senate seat that she’d held for twenty-four years, Higgens had become executive director of the United States Energy Institute (USEI), the oil and coal industry’s powerhouse lobbying group. She’d reportedly written more than three dozen energy bills in the last session alone, and found plenty of former colleagues—beneficiaries of USEI largesse—to introduce them under their own names. A boisterous, robust presence, Higgens had long been a favorite of Sunday morning interview shows: a plain-talking Texan whose twang-tinged homilies belied a superior intellect and political savvy widely respected inside the Beltway, where cunning counted as a virtue, not a vice.

  “The esteemed senator,” Vice President Percy said with a smile, “is not giving herself proper credit, but I’m sure she’ll agree that it’s vital for us to come up with a plan that will really deal with global warming. If we don’t, we’re…” And here Percy paused, maybe for dramatic effect. If so, Senator Higgens usurped the tension entirely:

  “Toast, Andy. We’re toast, baked, bar-bee-cued.” The senator guffawed, spurring surprised laughter around the room.

  But Jenna sat in startled silence, shocked by what the senator appeared to endorse: wholesale acceptance by the oil and coal industry of the impending peril posed by climate change. Amazing. Momentous. Even bigger than when some of the oil industry giants finally stopped funding institutes that denied climate change with pretend science.

  “We are warming,” the vice president agreed wryly with the senator. “Evan Stubb,” Percy’s chief of staff, “will coordinate your efforts to come up with the cheapest, most efficient means of sharply reducing temperatures and GHGs. In other words, the president wants a short list of the most promising geoengineering options, and he’d like it in the next sixty days, along with your recommendations on how to proceed.”

  “Planning on being reelected?” asked the goateed environmentalist who’d leered at Jenna. The election was only ten days away.

  The vice president just grinned and directed one of his aides to pass out the memo his office had prepared on geoengineering. Jenna skimmed the first page quickly. Under “Most Feasible” she saw a short section on increasing cloud cover, which noted tersely: “Will cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space. Will not remove greenhouse gases.”

  Sure won’t, she thought. Increasing cloud cover would only make it possible to live with higher levels of the gases … in the short run. Carbon dioxide would still be absorbed the by oceans, generating ever more carbonic acid, which killed sea life. This was no theoretical threat: In just the past nine years, vast stretches of ocean in which algae had died and disappeared had grown by 15 percent. Nine years. And every scientist, including Jenna, knew that algae was overwhelmingly important: It was the source of much of the Earth’s oxygen and was the beginning of the food chain for many animals. Far more visible than the loss of algae was the destruction of half the world’s major reef systems, dying from carbonic acid overload. The human species was not likely to survive if life vanished from three-quarters of the planet.

  Under a separate “Feasible” category, the vice president’s memo included “underground sequestration of carbon dioxide.” Might work, Jenna agreed, but she knew that it would lower temperatures only slowly. Geologic sequestration, or GS as it was called, entailed injecting huge amounts of CO2 from manufacturing or power plants into rock formations deep within the Earth. Over time, the rock would eventually “wash out” the carbon. But “eventually” meant centuries, and the amount of CO2 being produced even in just the United States was overwhelming. Plus, if this was to work, there would have to be a sea change in attitudes at the EPA because the agency had approved only a few rock formations for sequestration. Meantime, glaciers would continue to melt at record rates. Already, the lives of a hundred million people in South America were threatened by the loss of their chief source of drinking water: low-lying Andean glaciers.

  As the author of the most celebrated book on geoengineering, Jenna might have been expected to have been in a celebratory mood as she left the White House: Her time had come, along with a great deal of attention. Clearly, the executive branch had given up on making any additional efforts to try to get people to change how they lived, ate, traveled, and worked. But she felt deeply ambivalent about this surrender. She wondered what would happen if people were given the real, painful reasons—or real incentives—to modify their patterns of production and consumption. Geoengineering, even at this late stage, felt like giving a heart patient quadruple bypass surgery instead of putting him on a low-fat diet. It might save the patient, but it could just as easily kill him.

  Jenna no longer wondered why USEI was on board: As long as geoengineering muscled its way to the forefront of climate change efforts, the fossil fuel industry could argue that it was okay to burn every last barrel of crude and bucket of coal.

  Exiting the White House, she was escorted to one of a fleet of electric cars that would ferry away the task force. As Jenna climbed into the backseat, she was unable to think of a viable geoengineering technique that did not threaten lethal consequences for humanity. But as the car eased past a regiment of reporters hurling questions that nobody on the task force rolled down their windows to answer, she also knew that political impotence—and widespread public skepticism of global warming—had sent the Earth cartwheeling down a precipitous slope.

  The car had no sooner turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House looming in the background, than she realized with a start that geoengineering truly posed the most daunting question ever faced by humankind: Do you embrace a dangerous technique that could save the planet—or, with a single miscalculation, plunge it into a final frozen collapse? Or do you soldier on with potentially safer solutions that lacked political support and had failed to arrest the devastating climate changes taking place on land, in the sea, and, most crucially, in the tender skin of sky that protected us all?

  Quadruple bypass surgery, or
low-fat diet?

  After one meeting of the task force, Jenna knew the White House answer: Welcome to the operating room for planet Earth.

  CHAPTER 6

  On Capitol Hill, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was holding an emergency meeting with James Crossett, the director of the CIA. His tense visage was matched by the lockjaw expressions on the faces of two assistant directors who flanked him in the highly secure hearing room. Laptops sat open before all three men. Crossett snapped his screen shut before resuming his testimony:

  “When we talk about the bombing in the Maldives, what’s most important, from our standpoint, is that it’s a stark example of the impact of climate change on national security. Yes, it was a tragic terrorist attack; but it was also the most powerful warning yet that even a stable Muslim nation can experience brutal national security effects from global warming.” In a softer voice that caused several senators to lean forward, Crossett added, “And don’t forget that the Maldives isn’t far from Diego Garcia.” The United States’ closest naval base to Afghanistan.

  “These Maldivians, they aren’t screaming about global warming,” insisted the rotund, bespectacled chair of the committee. “It’s a simple power struggle. They want what they don’t have.”

  Crossett rubbed his chin. “Mr. Chairman, there’s a power struggle because the country is in a growing state of panic over the ocean rising all around them—much faster than the U.N. said. We’re hearing from our agents in situ that Muslims are loudly blaming our ‘decadent’ lifestyle for the impending loss of their country. They’re building on stilts, senators. Stilts.” The CIA chief eyed them all. “They’re raising seawalls, and now they’re announcing plans to barge dirt from one island to another to try to save themselves. Climate change is not theory to them. It is day-to-day reality throughout the archipelago. We’ve got to get our heads straight on this: Climate change is an increasingly serious national security issue for all nations. We will not be spared.”

  “The Muslims sell most of the oil.” With a histrionic flourish, the committee chair whipped off his tortoiseshell glasses. “They’re the ones emptying our pockets. It’s the height of hypocrisy for them to blame us for whatever lifestyle we choose to have. I’m not going to apologize to those buggers for anything.”

  “The leaders of the oil-rich nations are draining our treasury, that’s true,” the director rubbed his chin for the second time in a minute, “but let’s acknowledge what we also all know to be true: The people of the Mideast petro states view their leaders as corrupt despots—and for good reason. The ferment in Islamic nations is as much about corruption, and the poverty it produces, as it is about radical reinterpretations of the Koran. Those factors are all linked. I’m sure I don’t need to add that the Maldives doesn’t produce a single drop of petroleum.”

  “No, just panicky reactions from your analysts.” The octogenarian chair sat back, twirled his glasses, and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a grin. “So you’re saying that you want to take analysts away from hunting for Al Qaeda and put them on The March of the Penguins?” His barely suppressed smile exploded into laughter. Most of the committee joined in. Freshman Senator Jess Becker of Vermont waited for the mood to settle before glancing at the CIA chief.

  “The Agency’s assessment is backed up by military intelligence.” The Senate’s youngest and newest member turned to his colleagues. “They’re reporting that Al Qaeda operatives in the Maldives are doing everything they can to drum up resentment by claiming that the U.S. is trying to drive them into the sea. This is no laughing matter.”

  The CIA director offered the brush-cut Becker the slightest nod. The chair responded by saying, “Calm down, ’cause we got bigger fish to fry with the Pakis and Afghans.”

  * * *

  Senator Gayle Higgens had perfected the Texas swagger, no easy task for a gimp-kneed, sixty-six-year-old woman who carried more extra poundage than the purveyors of red ink in congressional budget committees. She used a tightly wrapped pink umbrella with a titanium tip as a walking stick, and carried herself with such aplomb that constituents had been known to burst into applause when she paraded past. Might have been the hat, too: big, broad-brimmed, and every bit as colorful as its wearer.

  She entered United States Energy Institute headquarters on K Street, a thoroughfare long home to lobbyists, think tanks, and advocacy groups of all stripes. None had a more prestigious address—or reigned as powerfully—as USEI with its oil- and coal-money muscle. Higgens swept into the lobby like she owned the place, pointed her umbrella walking stick at a spry woman with an armful of reports and said, “Round ’em up, Edie, we’ve got to powwow in teepee number one. Giddyap.”

  Higgens had become a parody of herself, but she didn’t give a damn what the Washington mandarins thought. Part of her appeal was her complete indifference to decorum. It had worked with Texas voters for more than two decades, and it had landed her a high, seven-figure “appreciation” from the very industry that she’d represented so ably in the Senate. The revolving door of government and politics had landed her in this unapologetically opulent, marble-floored building designed entirely along classical Greek lines: symmetrical and perfectly proportional right down to the Ionic columns that graced both sides of the vaulted lobby. It reeked of riches, the enduring power of fossil fuels.

  “And you,” she pointed the gleaming titanium tip at a male intern who could have moonlighted as a model, “a club sandwich with mayo. Some joker got me one last week that was drier than a Texas pee pot.”

  This is going to be fun, Higgens mused to herself. Even though she’d always said—often very loudly—that patience was a “vastly overrated virtue,” persistence had now paid off: Geoengineering would give oil and coal a new lease on life. Many new leases, she thought merrily.

  The senator took her place at the head of a conference table, club sandwich in easy reach, wholly unselfconscious about eating while her staff settled into their seats and she chatted up an aide about his newborn son. Higgens had a superb politician’s gifts of empathy and curiosity; in her case, both were genuine. People liked her, even people who abhorred her politics. The perfect voice for USEI.

  She smiled at the staffers assembled around the table. Twelve of them. My disciples, she thought without a smidgeon of seriousness or sanctimony.

  “Okay, boys and girls, life’s going to change around here. Y’all are fired.”

  She relished their shocked silence, but only for a moment. “Ease up, for chrissakes. Can’t y’all tell when an old cowgirl’s ringin’ your bell? We are in bidness, folks, like never before. The White House has signed on to ge-o-en-gin-eer-ing, all six lu-cra-tive syllables. No leaks about this to the media. You hear me? No leaks.” She broke into laughter. “’Cept to the usual suspects. Now, I want updated reports on all of the following. Ready?”

  She took another bite of her sandwich, loving the smooth mayo spreading over her tongue. That cute little intern’s got a future. Then she wheeled on a young man directly to her left, rangy as a fence post on her Abilene ranch, which she hadn’t seen in two years. “You’ve been looking at sequestration of CO2.” Pumping carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs, coal mines, saline aquifers, and the like to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. “Keep at it. Give me the latest costs, which—” She put up her hand to shush the fellow. “I know they’re enormous. The risks?” Raising a question no one at the table was now foolish enough to try to answer. “Comme ci, comme ça. But probably on the safer side. Give me footnotes, too, to show we did our homework. I want it by Friday. You may leave,” she said to the rangy one. All of them knew that meant: “Get to work.”

  “You two.” She waved the turkey-stuffed sandwich at a middle-aged man and a younger woman rumored to have posted a video of themselves on the Net having blindfolded sex in the office. “I want you to give me the postmortem on filtering CO2 from air. That’s DOA but I want to be able to say ‘Big bucks and big problems,’ so dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
Go.” They left. To work, she hoped.

  Higgens gave a sigh that might have been rooted in longing or nostalgia, then tapped the table with a fingernail as pink as her umbrella. Her gaze had landed on another edible youngster, as she thought of the twenty-somethings. “Charles,” spoken as another, more maternal woman might offer the name of a long-lost son, “you get mineral carbonation.” Turning CO2 to stone. “List the advantages, say that it’s not too risky for the faint of heart, but make sure that you point out that the engineering challenges are a killer. And Charles,” she mewed again, “make this sink like a … stone. It’s a time waster, and what’s time?”

  “Money,” he answered to her beaming approval.

  “Scoot. Now you, Prince Harry,” she said, smiling, to a junior researcher who shared the royal’s first name, cherubic well-scrubbed looks, and upswept ginger hair. “You get to tackle clouds and space mirrors. I know, Prince Harry,” as if he actually had the cojones to object, “it’s another defensive move, but if we don’t line up all our duckies, how can we possibly gun them down? So explain how we could increase the number of clouds to reflect sunlight back into space using those automated boats that fire mist into the air, or whatever the devil they shoot up there, and then explain why it’ll cost a fortune. Be creative. Also, knock down that kook’s ideas for sending thousands of mirrors into space to reflect the sun. That really will cost billions and basically hand China the keys to the treasury.” They nodded. “Oh, wait, we’ve already done that, haven’t we?” She hee-hawed.