Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [100]
Frank sang, “Territoriality, ooooop! Does that mean we’re screwed then?”
“No, not necessarily. There are too many funding sources with a really serious interest in mitigating climate damage. The science agencies, emergency services, even NIH, even the Pentagon. It’s up to Diane to build an alliance that can get things done. They’ll have to fight for everything they get. It would help a lot if they could turn the other side right at the head, and convince the president’s team that this stuff has to be done, and that it could be taken as an opportunity for new technologies and businesses that the rest of the world is going to have to use. Whether that could work, I don’t know the White House well enough to say. They seem like idiots, but they can’t be as stupid as they seem or they wouldn’t be there. Anyway Diane says she’s going to give it a try. Senate first, but White House too.”
In Frank’s meetings with her, Diane did not refer to this part of the struggle, preferring to discuss the technical aspects of their work. The North Atlantic project was still being researched, and Diane still liked it very much, but she was very concerned that they also pursue a vigorous hunt for some biologically based carbon capture method. Frank wondered if the legal and political problems inherent in releasing a genetically modified organism into the environment could ever be overcome; but he knew exactly who to call about the technical aspects of it, of course.
He had been thinking of calling Marta and Yann again anyway. So, after a meeting with Diane, he steeled himself to the task. Thinking of the surveillance issue, he wondered if he should call them from a public phone, but realized both ends had to be unsurveiled for that to work. No, best to do this work in the open and let the chips fall where they may, the stocks rise as they might. So he called them at their Small Delivery numbers, from his office.
“Hi Marta, it’s Frank. I wanted to talk to you and Yann about the carbon capture work you described to me. Can you tell me how that study is coming along, I mean just in general terms?”
“It’s going okay.”
“So, you know—in the absence of long-term field studies, have you gotten any back-of-the-envelopes on how quickly it might work, or how much it might draw down?”
“We can only extrapolate from lab results.”
“And what does that indicate, if anything?”
“It could be considerable.”
“I see.”
Marta said, “How’s the San Diego project coming along?”
“Oh good, good. I mean, I’m recused from any direct action on that front, but I’m following the process, and people at UCSD and in the biotech community there are really excited about it. So I think something will happen.”
“And we’ll have a place in it?”
“Yes, well, they’re working on an offer. There’s going to be a kind of MacArthur award committee disbursing some research money; it won’t be quite as unconstrained as MacArthur money, but there will be a lot of it, and it will be awarded without applications to people judged deserving.”
“I see.” Marta’s voice was still heavy with skepticism, but Frank noted that she was not being actively hostile either. “Well, I look forward to seeing how that goes.”
“It would surely help you if you’re ever going to try to deploy anything like this lichen you’ve described.”
“We’ve got an array of options,” she said shortly, and would not elaborate.
Next morning at NSF he found out from Edgardo that Diane had been in a fight with the president’s Science Advisor, Dr. Zacharius Strengloft. Strengloft had suggested to her in a meeting at the Capitol with the Senate Natural Resources Committee that NSF should keep to what it was good at, which meant disbursing grant money. Diane had given him her Look of Stone and then told him in no uncertain terms that NSF was run by her and the