Blackmail Earth

Chapter 5





President Victor Reynolds gripped Jenna’s hand in both of his, looked directly into her bright blue eyes, and thanked her profusely: “Your president and your nation deeply appreciate your service.”

She was impressed. He was the president, after all, even if he was afflicted with that annoying, self-important tic of referring to himself in the third person. Indeed, his warm welcome might have overwhelmed Jenna, if she hadn’t already heard him repeat the very same words to nine other members of the newly assembled task force. And there were still a half dozen in line behind her.

Little matter, she was proud to shake the chief executive’s hand and enter the Oval Office. They’d been herded here by Vice President Andrew Percy, who was well positioned to succeed his boss in four years. The press corps had dubbed him “Hair Apparent,” hardly a unique sobriquet, but aptly applied to Percy with his wavy black locks; at sixty-three, they remained suspiciously unstreaked by gray, à la Reagan, and rose like a crown above his handsomely weathered face. It was as if every hair were straining to reach the nation’s highest office, openly betraying the man’s scantily clad ambition.

For Jenna, walking up to the White House gate this morning had come as a welcome distraction. Last night’s arrival at Washington’s historic Union Station had capped a trip horribly tainted by the terrible news from the Maldives. Bidding good-bye to Dafoe had been sweet, but the weekend’s pleasure had dimmed the moment Jenna had read about Basheera’s death. She’d made her way to the venerable Hay-Adams Hotel still stunned by the news—and grateful for the capital’s edifices of white marble with their reassuring displays of permanence and resilience. Even in Washington’s most frenetic periods, the city offered a mellower mood than New York. And the District, though hot and muggy, hadn’t endured the grisly murders that had made New York so bleak and edgy of late, perhaps because the high temperatures didn’t feel like an order of magnitude beyond what this Southern town had always known.

Jenna glanced around the Oval Office. How great is this? she asked herself. Very great. By joining the task force, she’d plunged right into the fiercely unpredictable currents of history.

As her eyes settled on the carpet’s presidential seal, she realized, with a bolt of sadness, how dearly she wished that her parents could have known about this event: Their lives had been swept away by black ice just outside Burlington three years ago, a mere month after their only child had joined The Morning Show.

The click-click-click of the White House photographer’s camera snagged Jenna’s attention as easily as the young woman behind the lens had caught her smiling minutes ago at President Reynolds, who didn’t possess all of Hair Apparent’s polish, but the president did have that uncanny, hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile, which had charmed tens of millions of voters. Another click made Jenna think that the photo of her with the president would be great for her scrapbook, if she ever got around to making one. Show it to the kids someday.

There you go again with the kid thing. That’s no biological clock you’ve got ticking, she thought. That’s a biological storm trooper beating down a door, determined to have his way with you.

Maybe you should focus on this, she scolded herself, now that the president had cleared his throat—so noisily that she worried he’d use the historic brass spittoon inches to her left. Thankfully, he did not.

“All of you are about to embark on a task critical to our nation’s future, and to the future of our children and our children’s children…”

She tried to focus—she really did—but clichés always sent her thoughts reeling, making even the most sincere sentiments sound as limp and disposable as a wet paper towel. Reynolds concluded his mercifully brief remarks with “And may God bless each of you and guide you on this momentous journey. Now, I have to go down to the Situation Room, and you’ve got your own duties to attend to.” Pausing only to grip the vice president’s shoulder for a moment, Reynolds headed out the door with that mischievous and—Jenna had to admit—appealing smile of his.

A White House aide ushered the task force out of the Oval Office—though it was likely the group would have followed Vice President Percy down the hall without the aide’s help. As she left the room, Jenna took a final look around, noting the portrait of George Washington above the fireplace. And Abraham Lincoln, just to her left as she headed out the door. She adored Lincoln and had read several biographies of him.

Jenna trailed the other task force members to a conference room where carafes of coffee awaited them. She didn’t need caffeine to get jazzed, not this morning.

The vice president, in his role as task force chair, moved to the head of the long mahogany table. As he perused his notes, another aide, as clean-cut as a pine plank, handed out confidentiality agreements that each member signed.

Though Jenna recognized a number of scientists on the task force, the person grabbing her immediate attention was Senator Gayle Higgens, who’d represented Texas until two years ago. “Tossed out with the other rascals,” was how she’d described her defeat to The Washington Post. In that interview, Higgens did not mention how deeply she’d been bankrolled by the petroleum interests so dominant in her home state, or her controversial six-figure “speaking fees.” They had become such a scandal that in the end, most voters in Texas went for the other guy … a landslide defeat that made Higgens even more memorable.

Two environmentalists of note sat to Jenna’s right. She nodded and smiled, and had to look away when the one with a white goatee—old enough, and then some, to be her father—stared too intently into her eyes. No, I’m not trolling for a date. Jesus. She was reminded, once again, of Washington’s strange sexual charge, where power—and access to power—was the dominant aphrodisiac.

Across the table she spotted two scientists who wrote immensely popular blogs on climate change. One of them, Ben Norris—balding, freckled, jowly—had been an outcast at NASA during George W.’s regime, forced to abide a callow press aide who’d monitored his every public utterance. Jenna was glad to see that Norris had finally been granted a seat at the table, literally and figuratively. She gave him a quick smile, pleased that the panel was dominated by men and women of his caliber.

“It has become painfully clear,” the vice president began, looking over the assembly of men and women from across the racial and religious spectra, “that we are nowhere near the level of reductions in greenhouse gases necessary to prevent disastrous consequences from climate change. That’s the overwhelming scientific consensus, which is no longer in serious dispute…”

Jenna sat up, astonished to hear such direct and—yes, dire—language from the VP, who was speaking far more frankly about global warming than any administration official in history.

Of course, all of us just swore to keep our mouths shut.

“Even if we had managed to convince the American people of the need to make dramatic changes in the way we live,” Percy went on, “which we’ve utterly failed to do, the developing world—especially China, India, and Brazil—has shown a tragic unwillingness to make more than nominal attempts to cut back.” Percy shook his head sadly; it didn’t look like an act to Jenna.

She shot a glance at Gayle Higgens, wondering what “Senator Fossil Fuels,” as the greenies called her, made of the vice president’s shocking admission. Higgens—Jenna could scarcely believe this—was smiling and nodding.

Have I just walked through the looking glass, she wondered, where nothing is as it appears?

The vice president paused, looked meaningfully around the room, and said, “We have to see what science and technology can do to lower the Earth’s thermostat. We have to move forward aggressively with geoengineering. I want you to consider everything that’s feasible, from CCS”—carbon capture and storage, usually underground—“to launching sulfates into space to reflect sunlight. We want to hear about whatever you think will work.”

Whoa. Jenna had assumed that geoengineering would be on the agenda—why else would they have invited her?—but not that it would be the agenda. And to talk so causally about using sulfates, in particular, was sobering to her. She’d actually had a nightmare about sulfates being blasted into the atmosphere, which she was willing to bet was one of the very few dreams about that odd subject ever to afflict humankind. Desperate to awaken, she dreamed she was standing at a window watching a beautiful sunny day turn bitter cold. Her reflection in the glass showed frost coating her face, and she felt her heartbeat slowing. Worse, in the dream she heard it stop, which awakened her, ironically enough, in a sweltering pool of perspiration.

“That’s what all of you have in common,” Percy said. “You’re acknowledged experts in your fields, and you’ve all expressed deep skepticism about our country’s willingness to take the steps required to reduce GHGs.” Greenhouse gases. Percy nodded at Norris, the prodigal son from NASA, who sat grimacing with his arms crossed. “You need to understand that we basically agree with those of you who have been most critical of your government’s efforts in this regard.”

“Hold on, Mr. Vice President,” NASA’s own said. “What you’re telling us—let’s cut to the quick here—is that there’s no real commitment to reduce GHGs, so now we’re going to tinker with the planet’s incredibly fragile heating and cooling system, something our forebears did a couple of hundred years ago, which some of us are now calling the ‘Industrial Rotisserie.’”

Percy ignored the play on words. “They increased temperatures by burning carbon-based fuels, and we intend to lower them.”

“Unbelievable. Do you have any understanding of the risks? This could kill all of us. Miserably.”

“We do, of course. But we think that doing nothing will be much worse.”

“But you won’t address the risks publicly?”

“No, we won’t. We recognize that this is the most serious crisis ever faced by any administration, but talking publicly would only set off panic.”

“If you’d spoken openly five years ago when you were running for—”

“That was then, this is now. Ben, let’s not squabble over what’s done. There’s no time. Look,” Percy pushed aside his notes and leaned forward, “we’ve tried complicated international agreements, and no one, including us, has ever lived up to them. And it’s not just climate change by itself that has us worried: The CIA has just completed a two-year research project investigating the impact of what’s happening with the planet on national security. The conclusions are dreadful: In Africa alone, warming is expected to make civil war as common as drought.”

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.