Blackmail Earth (8 page)

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 CO
2
.” 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 CO
2
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 CO
2
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.

“You, you, and you.” Higgens polished off the last of her sandwich and licked her fingertips before turning to three Ph.D.s in chemical engineering. “I want y’all to get an update on that report you did six months ago on blowing up sulfates in the stratosphere.” She liked this idea a lot. Kind of like setting off volcanoes in the sky to cloud the Earth, block the sun, and reduce temperatures in a hurry.
Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head …

Sulfates were salts that contained a charged group of sulfur and oxygen atoms, SO
4
, the basic constituent of sulfuric acid. Using sulfates as aerosols could cool the climate in two basic ways: by having the sulfates attach to particles of solid matter, such as dust, or by having them attach to existing aerosol particles, such as clouds. However, this cooling would not neatly cancel out the effects of greenhouse warming. As Higgens knew, it could actually make the situation more complex, because the cooling and greenhouse effects would likely occur in different—and not always desirable—places. For instance, the aerosol impacts would be focused mostly over industrialized areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while the warming impacts would be greatest over the subtropical oceans and deserts—where island nations like the Maldives were facing complete submersion into the ocean. That would mean the loss of all the life-forms and ecosystems that made those lands their home. The result? The world would see dramatic changes in regional weather patterns in the future, not just increases in temperature.
Ouch!

And if sulfates cooled the planet too much or too fast, there might be an ice age.
Big
ouch.

On the plus side, firing up sulfates would mean partnering with the Department of Defense to put thousands of rockets to good use, instead of letting them molder in their silos. USEI and DOD always made a powerful one-two punch. But much as Higgens relished the prospect of calling her friends at missile maker Lockheed Martin, her enthusiasm for turning sulfur particles into fireworks was purely provisional: She knew better than to expect a White House buy-in for bombs in any first-stage effort.