Deacidifying the oceans? That wasn’t really possible, although there were attempts to frack the new basalt on the mid-Atlantic rift to capture carbonates, also attempts to in effect lime the oceans, also to build giant electrolysis baths and new algal life communities, and so on. Still the oceans were sick, as between a third and a half of the carbon burned in the carbon-burning years had ended up in the ocean and acidified it, making it difficult for many carbon-based creatures at the bottom of the food chain. And when the ocean is sick, humanity is sick. So this was another aspect of their era, and something to keep land agriculture itself at the front of the docket, because aquaculture (which had been one third of humanity’s food) was now a very active and complicated business, not just a matter of hauling fish out of the sea.
Construction? This used to release a lot of carbon, both in the creation of cement and in the operation of building machinery. Lots of explosive power needed for these jobs, and so to continue them biofuels were important; biofuel carbon was dragged out of the air, collected, burned back into the air, then dragged down again. It was a cycle that needed to stay neutral. Cement itself was mostly replaced by the various graphenated composites, in the so-called Anderson Trifecta, very elegant: carbon was sucked out of the air and turned into graphene, which was fixed into composites by 3-D printing and used in building materials, thus sequestering it and keeping it from returning to the atmosphere. So now even building infrastructure could be carbon negative (meaning more carbon removed from the atmosphere than added, for those of you wondering). How cool was that? Maybe so cool it would return the world to 280 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, maybe even start a little ice age; people shivered with anticipation at the thought, especially glaciologists.
But so expensive. Economists could not help but be dubious. Because prices were always right, because the market was always right, right? So these newfangled inventions, so highly touted by those neo-Malthusians still worried by the discredited Club of Rome limits-to-growth issues—could we really afford these things? Wouldn’t everything be better sorted out by the market?
Could we afford to survive? Well, this wasn’t really the way to frame the question, the economists said. It was more a matter of trusting that economics and the human spirit had solved all problems around the beginning of the modern era, or in the years of the neoliberal turn. Wasn’t it obvious? Just come to Davos and look at their equations, it all made sense! And the laws and the guns backing adherence to those laws all agreed. So hey, just continue down the chute and trust the experts on how things work!
So guess what: there was not consensus. Are you surprised? These interesting new technologies, adding up to what could be a carbon-negative civilization, were only one aspect of a much larger debate on how civilization should cope with the crises inherited from previous generations of expert stupidity. And the Four Horses were loose on the land, so this was not the sanest of world cultures ever to occupy the planet, no, not quite the sanest. Indeed it could be argued that as the stakes got higher, people got crazier. The tyranny of sunk costs, followed by an escalation of commitment; very common, common enough that it was economists who had named these actions, as they are names for economic behaviors. So yeah, double down and hope for the best! Or try to change course. And as both efforts tried to seize the rudder of the great ship of state, fights broke out on the quarterdeck! Oh dear, oh my. Read on, reader, if you dare! Because history is the soap opera that hurts, the kabuki with real knives.
This is a kind of verbal fugue, if Writer says so.
suggested David Markson
The strangest is that which, being in many particulars most like, is in some essential particular most unlike.
—Thoreau discovers the uncanny valley, 1846
b) Stefan and Roberto
Roberto and Stefan loved it when the great harbor froze over. New York’s schizophrenic weather only made it happen for a week or so at a time, usually, but while the ice held they were in a different world. The previous year in a freeze they had tried to make an iceboat, and though it had not been a success, they had learned some things. Now they wanted to try again.
Mr. Hexter asked if he could come along. “I used to do the same thing when I was a boy, out of the North Cove yacht harbor.”
The boys looked at each other uncertainly, but Stefan said, “Sure, Mr. H. Maybe you can help us figure out how to attach the skates to the bottom.”
Hexter smiled. “We used to screw them to two-by-fours, as I recall, and nail those to the bottom of whatever we had. Let me see what you’ve got.”
So they walked right down the center of Twenty-third, along with hundreds of other people doing the same, and then when they hit the river they went down to the Bloomfield aquaculture dock, where the boys had chained their iceboat’s deck to a concrete bollard, with a box of tools and materials hidden under it.
“Where do you guys get all this stuff?” Hexter asked them as he pawed through it. “Some of this is pretty decent.”
“We scavenge,” Stefan said.
Hexter nodded uncertainly. It was almost plausible, for most of it. The city was full of junk. A trip to Governors Island or Bayonne Bay might do it.
The dockmaster, Edgardo, came by and welcomed the boys, distracting Mr. Hexter from this line of inquiry. And it turned out Edgardo knew Mr. H a little. They talked over old times for a bit, and the boys were interested to learn that Mr. Hexter had once kept a rowboat at this dock.
When Edgardo moved on, the old man inspected their skates. “They look serviceable.”
“But how do you attach them so you can steer?” Stefan asked.
“Only the front one has to move. That one has to have like a rudder.”
As he pawed through their materials and tools he said, “So how are you guys feeling about your treasure, eh? Are you okay with how it’s being handled?”
The boys shrugged. Roberto said, “It bugs me that it isn’t being put in a museum or something. I don’t think they should melt the coins down. They’ve got to be worth more as ancient coins, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Hexter said. “I bet you’d like one or two yourselves, eh? You could punch a hole in one and make it into a necklace.”
The boys nodded thoughtfully, trying to imagine it. “That would be a blocknecklace for sure,” Roberto said. “What about you, Mr. Hexter? What do you think about it?”
“I’m not sure,” Hexter said. “I guess I think if we come out of it okay, like room and board forever, and a trust fund for you guys as adults, then I’ll be happy. You guys should see the world and all. Me, all I want is a new map cabinet. I mean beyond the necessities. Got to have the necessities, that’s for sure.”