Freedom [165]
“Sorry. I was trying to be sympathetic.”
“I’ve actually got a professional problem on my hands here, Patty. Not just some petty little personal emotional thing, believe it or not. A serious professional difficulty that I could use a bit of reassurance about. Somebody at the meeting this morning leaked something to the press, and I have to try to get out in front on a story I’m not sure I even want to be out in front on, because I was already feeling like I’ve fucked everything up here. Like all I’ve managed to do is release fourteen thousand acres to be blasted into a moonscape, and now the world has to be informed, and I don’t even care about the project anymore.”
“Right, well, actually,” Patty said, “the moonscape stuff does sound sort of awful.”
“Thank you! Thank you for the reassurance!”
“I was just reading an article about it in the Times this morning.”
“Today?”
“Yeah, they actually mentioned your warbler, and how bad mountaintop removal is for it.”
“Unbelievable! Today?”
“Yes, today.”
“Fuck! Somebody must have seen the piece in the paper today and then called the reporter with the leak. I just heard from him half an hour ago.”
“Well, anyway,” Patty said, “I’m sure you know best, although mountaintop removal does sound fairly horrible.”
He clutched his forehead, feeling close to tears again. He couldn’t believe he was getting this from his wife, at this hour, on this of all days. “Since when are you such a big fan of the Times?” he said.
“I’m just saying it sounds pretty bad. It doesn’t even sound like there’s any disagreement about how bad it is.”
“You’re the person who made fun of your mother for believing everything she read in the Times.”
“Ha-ha-ha! I’m my mother now? Because I don’t like mountaintop removal, I’m suddenly Joyce?”
“I’m just saying there are other aspects to the story.”
“You think we should be burning more coal. Making it easier to burn more coal. In spite of global warming.”
He slid his hand down over his eyes and pressed them until they hurt. “You want me to explain the reason? Should I do that?”
“If you want to.”
“We’re heading for a catastrophe, Patty. We are heading for a total collapse.”
“Well, and, frankly, I don’t know about you, but that’s starting to sound like kind of a relief to me.”
“I’m not talking about us!”
“Ha-ha-ha! I actually didn’t get that. I truly didn’t realize what you meant.”
“I meant that world population and energy consumption are going to have to fall drastically at some point. We’re way past sustainable even now. Once the collapse comes, there’s going to be a window of opportunity for ecosystems to recover, but only if there’s any nature left. So the big question is how much of the planet gets destroyed before the collapse. Do we completely use it up, and cut down every tree and sterilize every ocean, and then collapse? Or are there going to be some unwrecked strongholds that survive?”
“Either way, you and I will be long dead by then,” Patty said.
“Well, before I’m dead, I’m trying to create a stronghold. A refuge. Something to help a couple of ecosystems make it past the pinch point. That’s the whole project here.”
“Like,” she persisted, “there’s going to be a worldwide plague, and there’ll be this long line for the Tamiflu, or the Cipro, and you’re going to make us be the very last two people in it. ‘Oh, sorry, guys, darn, we just ran out.’ We’ll be nice and polite and agreeable, and then we’ll be dead.”
“Global warming is a huge threat,” Walter said, declining the bait, “but it’s still not as bad as radioactive waste. It turns out that species can adapt a lot faster than we used to think. If you’ve got climate change spread over a hundred years, a fragile ecosystem has a fighting chance. But when the reactor blows up, everything’s fucked immediately and stays fucked for the next five thousand years.”
“So yay coal. Let’s burn more coal. Rah, rah.”
“It’s complicated, Patty. The picture gets complicated when you consider the alternatives. Nuclear’s a disaster waiting to happen overnight. There’s zero