Chapter 5: July 11th
Pevek, Northern Siberia, Russia
Olga awoke to another painful day, sitting herself up in bed and steeling herself for the meetings ahead.
Things must go on she ruefully told herself. Dmitry lay comatose beside her, seemingly blissful in his sleep as always. She dressed herself and went downstairs in the big, old, house. This was the old communist headquarters and still displayed much of the breathtakingly banal architecture and interior design that only advanced bureaucracy can attain. The current owner had attempted to make it feel more homely and warm with the rich sofas and cozy warm throws, but the effect was akin to placing fluffy pillows in the middle of a desert.
“Madam, can I get you anything?” the male servant quietly requested.
“Just some coffee, thankyou” she replied softly. After she had sat for a while, Dmitry came lumbering down the stairs.
“How are you my darling?” as he kissed her head lovingly “Are you sure that you are up for this?” She nodded yes and melted into his arms. Once the others arrived there would be little room for sentiment. “Just coffee” Dmitry requested from the servant.
An endless and sad couple of hours later, a car could be heard outside rolling to a stop. Olga and Dmitry walked to the front door to welcome their guests, meeting them on the front steps.
“Olga, I am so sorry, I cannot imagine what you are going through” Zhaohui hugged her friend, and then quickly embraced Dmitry before introducing her colleague. “This is Chang Daofung, our Defence Minister” Zhaohui stated as she turned to the man standing next to her. He was a tall, solid and serious looking man dressed in a well-tailored but drab-looking suit; his nondescript exterior belayed the power of the disciplined military leader that he had spent his life becoming.
“Please accept my condolences, I lost my own daughter when she was just a teenager” Chang stated, compassionately. Olga thanked him as they went together inside the house and relaxed on the large sofas in the front room.
The perfect place to have a secret meeting thought Zhaohui I didn’t even know that this sad place existed before being told about the meeting. An assistant entered and laid out a pot of tea with four cups, and Dmitry poured. After an hour of catching up between friends, a friendship developed during the many years of working together to further the successful partnership between their two countries, they were ready to get down to the serious discussions.
Zhaohui spoke first, “The plans that we put in place many years ago are now fully bearing fruit. Although large reductions in carbon emissions will be painful for our economy, that pain will be much less than the United States will have to endure.
With our electrified train network, integrated with our fleet of electric vehicles, removing much of the remaining air flights and gasoline fueled road vehicles will not be too disruptive. Such a move would also benefit our trade balance with the further reductions in oil imports, as well as reducing our exposure to any disruption in seaborne trade; especially though the Straits of Malacca.” She paused and took a sip of her tea.
Dmitry took the chance to respond, “Yazov’s foresight about the decline of fossil fuels was brilliant, but the past decade has still been very difficult for us, as you know. The long-term oil and gas supply contracts with China have of course been a big help. Our massive drive toward the implementation of nuclear and renewable energy, together with the electrification of transport, has brought a new sense of pride and belief in the leadership. Better to use the fossil fuels to build the future we need, while we still can, rather than waste them on frivolities and unfriendly foreigners. The drive for energy efficiency has also paid off massively. Overall, the Russian people are ready for further reductions and we have the social cohesion needed to carry them out. Continued support from China will of course greatly aid that process.” Xaohui and Chang nodded sympathetically in agreement.
Now it was Chang’s turn to comment, “With Eastern Ukraine having come back into your arms, after the rapid demise of West Ukraine, your security concerns are also greatly reduced; easier to redirect resources to more useful ends. After the financial crash, the collapse of their ‘shale miracle’ and the internal infighting, the U.S. is definitely in a weakened position.”
“Their transport system is also such a mess” Zhaohui added “the
autonomous electric vehicle disruption of the transport industries has not been managed well, and there is still no electrified long-distance transportation network; significant reductions in domestic aircraft travel would be very disruptive. The country is in danger of being dragged down by the old before the new have a chance of prevailing. In the past years we have grown twice as fast as they have, and a 25% emissions cut will only push them further behind.”
“The U.S. President will need to reduce the ruinous military expenditures, especially in the failing Middle East countries that are bleeding the U.S. dry, and redirect the resources to his domestic agenda” added Dmitry.
“We are ready for the big emission cuts that are needed, and the Americans are not. In addition, with China sourcing its oil and gas imports from yourselves, together with Iran and Iraq, the weight of the big cuts will fall on those that supply the U.S. and its allies. The Europeans are also now even more dependent on Middle Eastern natural gas exports” responded Chang.
Olga interrupted, “We have to be very careful how we play this, wars have been started to resist much smaller losses of relative power. Remember the two world wars? Also, once the Americans actually get their act together, they can be formidable. We don’t want to provide their leadership with a new ‘axis of evil’ with which to focus their population’s efforts. Better to let them wither away slowly than to trigger an all-out response.” The others nodded in agreement.
“Yes, we are playing the long game here, no need to be greedy in the short term at the risk of endangering the overall strategy” Chang surmised. “The next step should be to build a consensus with the scientific advisers about the need for rapid, deep cuts. Better to be seen responding to the crisis, rather than driving it for our own benefit. We have the great advantage of having readied ourselves for this inevitable moment; we must not now throw away this historic opportunity.”
Zhaohui reminded them of the bigger issue that threatened all of them, “All the more reason to be very strong in getting across the message that geo-engineering alone cannot be the whole solution. With the oceans dying from the added carbon dioxide, we must immediately reduce emissions. Also, geo-engineering is simply a Band-Aid to allow time to treat the underlying condition of too much carbon in the atmosphere.”
Their discussions continued for the next two days as they went through the detailed actions and negotiating plans. They would be ready for the Americans.
Miami, Florida, United States
“Emily, Liam, have you finished packing yet” Julia shouted up the stairs to her two young children. She knew, of course, that the answer was no and that she would have to take control of things to get the packing finished. Her dirty blonde hair fell carelessly over a well-tanned face with creases starting to show around her brown eyes and full mouth. Svelte when she was young, the years had added a few pounds here and there. A light blue baggy t-shirt sat atop some comfortable shorts. She looked around the house that she and John had lived in since they were married. Memories of those crazy first years of marriage, then the birth of the children and then the house filled with their sounds. She loved this house and being so close to the ocean. Just across the quiet road and down the steps to the sea. Their little bit of paradise in Southern Florida.
Hurricane Vanessa in 2028 had been a wake-up call for all of Florida, with Miami dead in its crosshairs. Pictures of the downtown area with small boats floating, where cars should be, filled the headlines across the world. This was not the worst of it though; it was the aftermath that shook the state to the core.
The storm brought to the forefront the discussions that were happening quietly in many areas, such as insurance company risk departments and government planners, about the acceleration in sea level rise around Florida. Fifteen millimetres sea level rise, just over half an inch, may not seem to be much. When it is a yearly increase though, and that increase is accelerating, it is a big deal. In the decade before the hurricane sea levels around Miami had risen by about six inches, adding to the six inches in the previous fifteen years. More and more of the opulent mansions and condominiums, built to have “waterfront”, were now being flooded with the King tides.
“Too much misspent drug money” Julia and John would joke to each other. With the most recent measurements, it looked like Miami was in for about an extra nine inches of sea level rise in the next decade. Quietly and slowly at first, insurance companies started to restrict what they would insure, banks reduced their lending to properties near sea level, and businesses decided to “diversify their geographic locations”. Then it became apparent that some of the downtown properties were not being fully refurbished, but instead being allowed to slowly decline
Julia worked in an insurance company and had seen the way the tide was turning. After long, painful, discussions she and John had agreed to leave their little paradise while they still could. “Better to get out before the door slams shut” they agreed. She did feel some pangs of guilt about selling their house to others that may not enjoy it for that long, but the reduced price had helped stem such feelings.
“Emily, stop playing with your phone and finish packing” she said as she glided past her daughter’s room. An orderly vision met her as she entered her son’s room; everything packed neatly and laid on top of the bed.
If only he could have some of her craziness, and she some of his structure
A key turned in the front door and her husband swung into the house “everything ready for the trip north?” he questioned hesitantly.
“Your daughter needs some help from her daddy” she replied. He would of course end up doing most of Emily’s packing, as daddy’s little princess had a knack for getting others to do things for her, especially her father. Emily smiled to herself as she thought of the contrast between the muscular tough guy that had taken her fancy those years ago, and the doting father that he had become. Cute she thought to herself as she watched him packing his daughters things. His build had progressed from “thin and muscular” to “stocky” as he had gained a bit of a paunch as their marriage progressed, but those deep blue eyes still shone from a happy face. The few flecks of grey in his otherwise dark hair added to the pleasing image.
It was different with Liam, “We are raising a man!” her husband would refrain as they went hunting, fishing, playing and generally being strong and “manly”. A few hours later everything had been loaded by the movers, or filled the rented people carrier. The family rolled onto the road for their long trip north to New York, and the car dimmed the lights as it drove onto the interstate. At least they would all be able to get a good night’s sleep. Emily would miss her first boyfriend, but that would be soon overcome by the thrills of the big city. Her friends had been so envious of her move to the Big Apple; it showed in their eyes. To Liam, it was a big adventure as he lay in his bunk in the darkness as the road whooshed soundlessly by. Thankfully, Julia had been able to get a transfer and her fireman husband had been welcomed to a new firehouse in Queens. There certainly seemed to be no shortage of work for firemen.
Washington D.C., United States
The helicopter came to rest on the grass outside the White House, the door slid open and Jim and Kelly emerged. Definitely cool to be flown to the White House, Jim thought to himself as they were guided inside and up to the Oval Office for the briefing. He had been there before, but still couldn’t shake the feeling of being a little boy called up to the principal’s office.
As they entered, President Ashbridge emerged from behind the imposing desk “Kelly, great to see you” as he shook her hand before turning to Jim. “I hear that you had a quite an adventure in Greenland, seems we could have been fishing you out of Baffin Bay”, stated the President as he shook Jim’s hand.
“All in a day’s work for a climate scientist, Mr. President” Jim smiled back. The President then beckoned toward the sofa.
“So, you are here to give me the good news about the climate” he continued “as if I don’t need any more problems to deal with”. Mark Ashbridge had visibly aged in his nearly eight years in office, no longer the fresh-faced beacon of hope in what seemed to be a world careening out of control during those first years. The dark hair was now mixed with grey, the still energetic eyes a little duller and accompanied by darker bags underneath. The strong body of an ex-military man was still evident in his tall frame. Just as he had started to make progress in recovering from the great financial crash of the mid 2020’s, the Ukrainian incident had spun out of control with the neo-cons pushing for outright war. He had been able to pull back from the brink and establish a working relationship with the Russians and Chinese, while ejecting the “tin pot warriors” from the levers of power. Men who had never fought a war, but were gung-ho to risk other’s lives, now disgusted him. “I am not going to be another fucking Kennedy!” he had told his wife as he maneuvered to consolidate his power and tame those that would plot against him. Always in the background was the climate issue, which just never seemed to go away. The implementation of the ever-increasing carbon tax, the doubling of fuel efficiency standards for trucks, incentives for electric cars, tough actions against energy companies for methane leaks … it never seemed to be enough. The more problems he fixed, the more enemies he was making. “So, the Russians think everything is out of control and that we need an emergency meeting to save the world?” Ashbridge questioned.
“Unfortunately, yes”, Jim replied, “all of our emissions cuts have been offset by the increases in natural emissions and the extra heat being taken in by the increasingly ice-free Arctic. The result does seem to have been a triggering of multiple climate tipping points; the Russians are seeing that with the accelerating levels of permafrost melting, forest fires and methane releases. We are seeing these as well, in addition to the escalation in Greenland and Antarctic ice melt affecting sea levels.”
“How the hell did it get so bad so fast?” Ashbridge asked “it didn’t seem to be getting this out of control until pretty recently”.
Jim nodded ruefully in agreement “The problem with the climate is that it doesn’t move in straight lines, you can push it quite a lot with little change and then suddenly it makes a big jump. When I was young, I would watch the old cartoons, one of them was the Road Runner, who was chased by this luckless coyote”.
The President nodded in recognition “Wile. E. Coyote”.
Jim smiled, and continued “Yes, and that coyote was always running off cliffs where for a second he would hover in mid-air before falling. We ran off the cliff a while ago, we just didn’t realize that we were up for the fall. We have a chance to reach back and grab the cliff to save ourselves, but the window of opportunity is small and closing. The scale of the required immediate and large carbon emission cuts and geo-engineering are going to be really challenging.”
“Immediate big emissions cuts and geo-engineering, just what I feared – and in an election year!” Ashbridge opined “Asking people to make significant sacrifices after what they have already been through, and to accept that we are playing God with the climate, may be the toughest challenge of my presidency. We will also have to get a coalition together that is strong enough to take on the entrenched interests.” He turned and looked at Kelly, “There are a lot of powerful people that may find these changes unacceptable”.
She nodded back and responded “and not having an election to deal with would make it a lot easier …“, before being stopped by Ashbridge’s glare.
Jim’s eyes opened wide as he turned to look at Kelly and realized what was being alluded to.
“Let’s not go there right now,” the President intoned calmly “the two of you will attend the meetings with your counterparts and we will then be able to judge the scale of the political challenge. You cannot discuss any of this with others unless I explicitly authorize it”.
Jim’s mind spun what the fuck did I sign up to?
Chapter 6: July 12th
La Jolla, California, United States
The Pacific Ocean gently lapped up against the beach outside the windows of the meeting room, another beautiful day in Southern California. Standing tall in khaki shorts and red polo shirt, Li Yan glanced out at the beautiful view and then turned to face his audience. An ABC (American Born Chinese) down to his toes, he had the relaxed, confident manner that sits naturally on any uber-rich Californian. At five foot eleven, he towered above his parents. He was living the life, and it was treating him well.
“Such a beautiful day outside, seems a shame to discuss such bleak things, but then again loaded with some great investment opportunities!” he started, as his audience smiled appreciatively. Li had a knack for finding overlooked investment gems, and his firm and its investors had gained handsomely from his insights. “I have always thought that there had to be some major market mispricing in the period just before the full acceptance of climate change, and the need for big government actions, comes about. The climate is very much like the markets, it can go along in a trend for a long time and then suddenly for no apparent reason ‘boom’ it takes off or falls flat on its face.”
“So, are you saying that the climate is about to go ‘boom’, or people’s perception of the disastrous reality is about to go ‘boom’?” Meghan Turner questioned. As tall as Li, she had the build of a professional volleyball player with inquisitive green eyes that communicated the intense intellect lurking behind them.
“I’ve spent the past few years getting close to a lot of the leading climate scientists, and everything they are telling me is that the climate has already gone ‘boom’ – we are at the early stages of a big leap.” Li replied “That seems to be now working its way through the governments across the world, which may lead to some very serious policy actions – the kind that could finish off the fossil fuel companies and some pretty big chunks of the financial system. For example, the big banks are trying to quietly extricate themselves from the Southern Florida real estate market so as not to take some massive hits on their mortgage portfolios, as local sea level rise seems to have gone exponential. Same risk for other parts of the U.S. East Coast, depending upon whether, or not, the government decides to build flood defenses. The banks are caught between a rock and a hard place, because if they move too fast, they could trigger a general panic. Also, after the 2009 bailouts, and the 2025 bail-ins using depositors money to rescue them, there is no way the banks are going to get rescued again.”
“More likely lynched!”, Li’s boss Michael Richardson laughed. The room nodded in agreement. Michael was showing some of the horizontal growth of a wealthy and satisfied lifestyle, as comfortable layers added themselves to his previously athletic physique. It seemed that as his hair receded his waist had decided to compensate. He had taken Li under his wing and treated him somewhat like the son that he had never had. “We gave up trying after three girls” he would state to his drinking buddies.
Li continued “The insurance companies are also making it harder and harder to get flood insurance and are using any natural disaster they can as an excuse to reduce coverage. They are using lots of tricky language, like clauses excluding damages from storms that achieved Category 5 or 6 at any time rather than just when they hit landfall.”
Michael intently rubbed his chin, a signal that all now recognized as leading up to an incredibly insightful and erudite observation. “If this climate shit does really hit the fan, what kind of policies will the government have to put in place?” he asked to himself out loud. The room waited for the answer. “We are talking about world-war type emergency action, which may very well include a shutdown of the markets. We may have our profits on paper but no way of turning them into real money. Any major cut in emissions can only be carried out through a big drop in economic output, which will require extensive government control to stop a social explosion. Also, sharing the impact fairly across society will be needed to maintain some level of social cohesion. Rationing by government rather than through the market, bigger sacrifices for the rich. There may be a lot of opportunities, but we have to think about our ability to get the return of our invested capital, as well as the possible rate of return we could get on that capital.” Michael sat back in his chair. The rest knew to give him time to mull over his thoughts.
After a few seconds, Michael continued, “Li, you should look more deeply into the opportunities that you have identified, but also be careful about our ability to realize our profits. Meghan, I want you to look into the government policy options, they could offer both opportunities and risks. I need to start working my contacts to see if anything is brewing. Everyone else, I need you to give Li and Meghan all the support they need. Let’s reconvene in a week, I don’t expect that there will be much home time for anyone in the interim.” With that Michael stood up and “great presentation Li, you and Meghan, in my office.”
“Close the door” Michael stated as he relaxed into a large comfortable chair, motioning for Li and Meghan to sit on the couch next to him. “If what you are saying is correct, we could be on the verge of some very, very major economic and political changes. We need to tread carefully, and not share our overall view with the people we are dealing with. We should connect up each evening to discuss where this is taking us. Make sure that any such communications are secure and keep emails as mundane as possible. Any of the bigger picture notes should be kept with good old- fashioned pen and paper, understood?” The two of them nodded in agreement. “I will fly to Washington tonight” and with that Michael waved them out of the room as he reached for his telephone. They left, and as Li closed the door, they took in the gravity of what they had just experienced.
Hmmmm.... the problem, as I see it, is that confining the debate to fossil fuels and CO2 emissions, kinda misses the essence of the problem, namely the very nature of capitalist production, based as it is on endless growth, of everything and anything, whether it's washing machines or hair dryers. In other words, it's the very nature of capitalist existence, based on the arbitrary production of anything that can be sold, for a profit, to a population addicted to consumption, a population that measures its own self-worth through acquisition. Turn off that tap and the entire edifice collapses. Mass unemployment, mass starvation, unless, we collectivise. It means the complete reorganisation of, not only the economy but the very nature of social organisation. A country like China could do it but can anyone envisage the US doing it? Worse still, even if we cut emissions today to zero, we've pumped so much energy into the biosphere, that process is now pretty much unstoppable. Maybe in a couple hundred, or maybe a couple of thousand, years, in the meantime?
My real fear is that as long ago as the 1970s, the major ruling classes of the planet had already done this calculation and given their vast hubris, they figure they can ride out the storm, or perhaps they don't even care, who knows? What we've seen in 2023 is just the beginning...
Check this out:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/earth-ice-bone-blood
A myth-busting ride through climactic upheaval in the Russian Arctic, where extinction is not an end but a becoming. Charlotte Wrigley’s tales of life and matter, death and survival commingle, surprise, disrupt, and provoke. Masterful riffs about time across scales reimagine worlds beyond the hubris of scientific technofixes and other false promises of redemption.
—
Jennifer E. Telesca, author of Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna