Fifty Degrees Below. Kim Stanley Robinson

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СКАЧАТЬ his hands in his usual impresario style. ‘You name it! You could reference that Pentagon report about this possibility, which said it would be a threat to national security, as they couldn’t defend the nation from a starving world.’

      ‘Starving?’

      ‘Well, there are no food reserves to speak of. I know the food production problem appeared to be solved, at least in some quarters, but there were never any reserves built up. It’s just been assumed more could always be grown. But take Europe – right now it pretty much grows its own food. That’s six hundred and fifty million people. It’s the Gulf Stream that allows that. It moves about a petawatt northward, that’s a million billion watts, or about a hundred times as much energy as humanity generates. Canada, at the same latitude as Europe, only grows enough to feed its thirty million people, plus about double that in grain. They could up it a little if they had to, but think of Europe with a climate suddenly like Canada’s – how are they going to feed themselves? They’ll have a four or five hundred million person shortfall.’

      ‘Hmm,’ Diane said. ‘That’s what this Pentagon report said?’

      ‘Yes. But it was an internal document, written by a team led by an Andrew Marshall, one of the missile defense crowd. Its conclusions were inconvenient to the administration and it was getting buried when someone on the team slipped it to Fortune magazine, and they published it. It made a little stir at the time, because it came out of the Pentagon, and the possibilities it outlined were so bad. It was thought that it might influence a vote at the World Bank to change their investment pattern. The World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review Commission had recommended they cut off all future investment in fossil fuels, and move that same money into clean renewables. But in the end the World Bank board voted to keep their investment pattern the same, which was ninety-four percent to fossil fuels and six percent to renewables. After that the Pentagon report experienced the usual fate.’

      ‘Forgotten.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘We don’t remember our reports either,’ Edgardo said. ‘There are several NSF reports on this issue. I’ve got one here called “Environmental Science and Engineering for the 21st Century, The Role of the National Science Foundation.” It called for quadrupling the money NSF gave to its environmental programs, and suggested everyone else in government and industry do the same. Look at this table in it – forty-five percent of Earth’s land surface transformed by humans – fifty percent of surface freshwater used – two thirds of the marine fisheries fully exploited or depleted. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere thirty percent higher than before the industrial revolution. A quarter of all bird species extinct.’ He looked up at them over his reading glasses. ‘All these figures are worse now.’

      Diane looked at the copy of the page Edgardo had passed around. ‘Clearly ignorance of the situation has not been the problem. The problem is acting on what we know. Maybe people will be ready for that now. Better late than never.’

      ‘Unless it is too late,’ Edgardo suggested.

      Diane had said the same thing to Frank in private, but now she said firmly, ‘Let’s proceed on the assumption that it is never too late. I mean, here we are. So let’s get Sophie in, and prepare something for the White House and the congressional committees. Some plans. Things we can do right now, concerning both the Gulf Stream and global warming more generally.’

      ‘We’ll need to scare the shit out of them,’ Edgardo said.

      ‘Yes. Well, the marks of the flood are still all over town. That should help.’

      ‘People are already fond of the flood,’ Edgardo said. ‘It was an adventure. It got people out of their ruts.’

      ‘Nevertheless,’ Diane said, with a grimace that was still somehow cheerful or amused. Scaring politicians might be something she looked forward to.

      

      Given all that he had to do at work, Frank didn’t usually get away as early as he would have liked. But the June days were long, and with the treehouse finished there was no great rush to accomplish any particular task. Once in the park, he could wander up the West Ridge Trail and choose where to drop deeper to the east, looking for animals. Just north of Military Road the trail ran past the high point of the park, occupied by the site of Fort DeRussey, now low earthen bulwarks. One evening he saw movement inside the bulwarks, froze: some kind of antelope, its russet coloring not unlike the mounded earth, its neck stretched as it pulled down a branch with its mouth to strip off leaves. White stripes running diagonally up from its white belly. An exotic for sure. A feral from the zoo, and his first nondescript!

      It saw him, and yet continued to eat. Its jaw moved in a rolling, side-to-side mastication; the bottom jaw was the one that stayed still. It was alert to his movements, and yet not skittish. He wondered if there were any general feral characteristics, if escaped zoo animals were more trusting or less than the local natives. Something to ask Nancy.

      Abruptly the creature shot away through the trees. It was big! Frank grinned, pulled out his FOG phone and called it in. The cheap little cell phone was on something like a walkie-talkie or party line system, and Nancy or one of her assistants usually picked up right away. ‘Sorry, I don’t really know what it was.’ He described it the best he could. Pretty lame, but what could he do? He needed to learn more. ‘Call Clark on phone 12,’ Nancy suggested, ‘he’s the ungulate guy.’ No need to GPS the sighting, being right in the old fort.

      He hiked down the trail that ran from the fort to the creek, paralleling Military Road and then passing under its big bridge, which had survived but was still closed. It was nice and quiet in the ravine, with Beach Drive gone and all the roads crossing the park either gone or closed for repairs. A sanctuary.

      Green light in the muggy late afternoon. He kept an eye out for more animals, thinking about what might happen to them in the abrupt climate change Kenzo said they were now entering. All the discussion in the meeting that day had centered on the impacts to humans. That would be the usual way of most such discussions; but whole biomes, whole ecologies would be altered, perhaps devastated. That was what they were saying, really, when they talked about the impact on humans: they would lose the support of the domesticated part of nature. Everything would become an exotic; everything would have to go feral.

      He walked south on a route that stayed on the rim of the damaged part of the gorge as much as possible. When he came to site 21 he found the homeless guys there as usual, sitting around looking kind of beat.

      ‘Hey, Doc! Why aren’t you playing frisbee? They ran by just a while ago.’

      ‘Did they? Maybe I’ll catch them on their way back.’

      Frank regarded them; hanging around in the steamy sunset, smoking in their own fire, empties dented on the ground around them. Frank found he was thirsty, and hungry.

      ‘Who’ll eat pizza if I go get one?’

      Everyone would. ‘Get some beer too!’ Zeno said, with a hoarse laugh that falsely insinuated this was a joke.

      Frank hiked out to Connecticut and bought thin-crusted pizzas from a little stand across from Chicago’s. He liked them because he thought the owner of the stand was mocking the thick pads of dough that characterized the pizzas in the famous restaurant. Frank was a thin-crust man himself.

      Back into the dusky forest, two boxes held like a waiter. Then pizza around the fire, with the guys making their usual desultory conversation. The vet always studying the Post’s federal news section did indeed appear СКАЧАТЬ