Green Sahara
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“Pretty dramatic.” Vince glanced at Tamanna as they sat in the next room.
“We negotiate. Nishat insisted on a mature conversation, with someone able to comprehend when and where cooperation becomes an absolute necessity. With at least a national minister. She does not want more bickering amongst playground school boys over who wins.” She slapped her fingers on the table edge. “She wants us speaking on the truth, about where responsibility lies, and about the real impact of climate change. Based on non-politicized science.”
She leaned forward, eyebrows furrowed.
“Despite our best intentions, that was rubbish Vince. I twig now why Nishat didn’t attend; she has more than one strategy. She now depends on her messengers, and she needs our message to be crystal clear.” Her look hardened more. “If she decides to proceed, your presentation will be absolutely important.”
Vince nodded.
Tamanna raised her device to select a number, holding her forefinger up as it buzzed.
Vince stood, drifting back to the starlit evening framed by the window. Was he responsible? The furst star, the one his daughter waited on as the sky darkened before bedtime. If he could find that same twinkling brightness...he had a wish for Annalise. Amidst the back and forth arguments in his head, among the swirl of terror and tension, the political drama had triggered an inner eagerness, a pervading elation. To play the game for what’s real. To act as negotiator, sure storyteller, brought that on. He could take on the role of an ex oilfield engineer–or eco-terrorist depending who was talking.
His eyes scanned the edge of the horizon, but in the dark he could only imagine their erupting bunch of balloons. The all night release rose, he knew, even if not visible. Out on the streets that afternoon amidst cheering crowds, he’d supervising the ascent of the couple hundred around Niamey. Each emblazoned with Green Sahara, for the president’s campaign and his vision for Niger. Horns had blared all day, bicycles flew green flags high, and the pedestrian masses wore green armbands. These people didn’t know most of the soaring release would rise camouflaged over the next three weeks, up north around Agadez at the edge of the Sahara. Several thousand balloons loaded with their sulphur release systems.
The afternoon urban bunch had drifted south; they’d been lucky on the daytime wind, getting an 80% retrieval with the crews driving up the wadis. Recycling, same balloons, same tank, new sulphur load, they cut project costs even lower. He’d be flying to Agadez tomorrow or the day after, depending.
Each balloon was designed to lift just over a ton up to the specified 15 kilometers in the stratosphere. Vince had first gone up in the platform balloon for the Phase I Preliminary, to watch as the smaller test balloon emitted its sulphur load. A pressure sensitive valve opened before his eyes at 3 kilometers, down in the troposphere as he couldn’t go higher without oxygen. As it lost sulphur weight, the balloon and tank accelerated upward like a volcano erupting to finally empty kilometers higher. An invisible eruption. Until the sulphur dioxide mixed with atmospheric water to form aerosol. Acid rain in the troposphere, but a blue-haze reflecting aerosol up in the final target stratosphere. Eruption over, another sensor released the helium and the balloon descended back to the ground. The GPS showed it on visiscreen map, and he followed down to retrieve and reuse both balloon and sulphur tank. The contract could have ended right then, or even with the next local assessment.
But now he had Agadez, Phase II. And extra danger pay.
From high in the next balloon flight, he’d watched his driver race from the Nissan to dash behind a rock, the targeted detection app blaring siren warning. The Nissan disappeared in an explosion of sand and he learned then about Hellfire missiles. Launched from a Predator drone invisible in the high above sky, he learned the hard way his project made him a select drone target. For someone’s interests.
Invisible was a big problem when telling a story. Harvard said for every ton of trash going to landfill, 40 tons of carbon got dumped into the atmosphere. If carbon was a stinky jumbled mass, people would have cleaned it up right away. But you didn’t see carbon. Unlucky or unfair.
But a lot in life wasn’t fair.
How many tons each in Niger? How many back home? Way below a single ton here–Sahel countries emit a fifth of a ton each person. Back home depends, rich countries in the OECD average over 10 tons. Canadians over 15, Calgary higher, like Americans, over 20. So really, North Americans had caused it, Nigeriens hadn’t.
He quick-crunched more math. He, living in Calgary dumped over a hundred times the carbon as the green armband Nigeriens. He drove an SUV, they lost their rice harvest. Was he one of those kids in the candy shop?
Over the next three weeks they’d reach their 5000 ton target. Then every autumn for a decade, pending political decisions. The liquid sulphur dioxide now in storage could supply the mid-Atlantic release they had before only talked about. To boost the West African monsoon by cooling the Atlantic. Watch and attack drones would be everywhere over the Atlantic...that was open seas airspace. They would use modified business aircraft to deliver there, not balloons. Shooting down a plane in international airspace, however, that would scream political. The Atlantic release was but a reference calculation anyway, and their 5000 tons would cool the Nigerien climate only. Yeah, right! No way that could be so simple, not globally, not with a fluid atmosphere encircling the planet.
That was just the engineering and the climate science. The impacts of a successful launch brought in politics, where the real game got played. The laws of physics couldn’t care less about national borders, and as the sulphur thinned it would drift north towards the pole, over Algeria and Libya to start, and it would spread east and west too, over Chad and Mali. There’d be some kind of impact everywhere, all around the globe. Niger would affect his daughter’s life, even back in Calgary. His heart sank, fear dragging him to depth. But fear hit bottom and drove him forward too, tinged by hope.