Ultimatum Read online

  “No, sir. As you say, the existence of these effects isn’t new, but the implications are. Let me explain. A feedback effect is a cycle. The more you have, the more it happens. It ramps itself up, if you will. For example, the more sea ice melts, the less sea ice there is to reflect sunlight, so the warmer the temperature becomes, so now even more sea ice melts, so now even less sunlight is reflected. And so on from year to year. That’s easy. As you said yourself, we’ve all known these effects have been happening for many years. What’s harder to determine, until you actually see it, is the rate at which the cycle ramps up. A huge number of variables can have an effect. Previous models had to guess, they were built on assumptions about the rate of increase. They tended to assume a fairly moderate rate.”

  “You mean to be on the safe side they should have assumed a faster rate?”

  “It’s not my place to comment on what others should have done, sir. I’m just pointing out that the models assumed a certain range of rates. The Relocation plan you outlined during your campaign, for example, would be based partly on these assumptions, because the models on which it was based had these assumptions built in. What’s new is that we now have sufficient data to actually tell what the rate is with a high degree of confidence, and what these data are telling us, Senator, is that the cycle appears to be ramping up quicker than the previous models assumed.”

  “But if this is happening,” said Eales, “other scientists will be picking it up.”

  “Oh, it’s happening, Mr. Eales. And other scientists will pick it up. I would say, in a matter of two to three years, the trends will be more broadly obvious. We just have the ability to pick it up earlier because of our superior data gathering and monitoring capabilities.”

  “Dr. Richards,” said Benton, “you said your projections were mistaken before. How do we know they’re not mistaken again?”

  “We’ve learned, sir.”

  “So you’re confident of what you’re saying?”

  “We’re confident that we’re seeing effects happening at a rate fifteen to twenty percent faster than our models predicted. We can be ninety-nine percent certain that the increase is more than ten percent. Or to put it another way, there’s less than a one percent chance that the trends we’re seeing reflect less than a ten percent increase in the actual rate of change.”

  “In other words, you’re sure.”

  “I never say I’m sure, sir.”

  Benton looked for a hint of a smile on Dr. Richards’s lips, but didn’t see one.

  “Now, do you want to hear the bad news?” said the president. “Dr. Richards?”

  “As I said, Senator, this is a feedback loop. That means the longer it goes on, the more it accelerates itself. To put it simply, the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. Not in a linear fashion, but exponentially.” Dr. Richards paused. “With respect, do you understand the terminology, Senator, and its implications, or would you like me to explain?”

  Benton nodded. “I understand.”

  “It’s only in the last year that the trends have become this clear.”

  Benton watched Dr. Richards. She looked back at him with a clear, assertive gaze in her blue eyes. For a moment he wondered what she felt under that crisp exterior, if the numbers she cited so efficiently, the percentages, the degrees of certainty, found their way under her skin in terms of what they were going to mean to people. To millions of people, probably, if he had understood what she was saying.

  “Can you outline what the chief effects of this will be?”

  “Exacerbation of the phenomena we’re already projecting. Sea level rise, enhanced storm activity, altered rainfall patterns, altered growth patterns, alteration in disease ranges, and desertification. The whole panoply of effects, Senator.”

  “More specifically?”

  “Dr. Richards,” said the president before she could answer. “Thank you. That’s fine for now. Perhaps you could wait outside in case we have any further questions.”

  Richards nodded.

  “Thank you,” said Benton.

  She turned to go. Ed Steinhouser led her out.

  “Don’t want to get too technical,” remarked the president. “You’ll have numbers coming out your ears if you let her go on. Believe me, I’ve seen it. It ain’t pretty.”

  “We can get the detailed projections from her?” said Eales.

  “Sure. Art’ll set it up.”

  “Mike, you haven’t made any of this public,” said Benton.

  “Would you have?”

  “But you thought you could do a deal on this with the Chinese government?”

  “Listen, Joe,” said Gartner, “this is bigger than partisan politics. Way bigger. You heard what Richards said. This process accelerates itself. If we’re going to do anything about it, we have to put an end to it right now.”

  “And the Chinese? What’s the angle with them?”

  “China hasn’t honored a single agreement on emissions it’s signed up to. Not a single clause. Not Kyoto 3, not Kyoto 2.”

  “We haven’t been much better,” said Eales.

  “That maybe true, Mr. Eales,” replied the president sharply. “But China is worse. They overtook us as the world’s biggest polluter in absolute terms twenty-five years ago. That’s a whole quarter century, but they speak and behave as if they’re still a developing country. They have to take some responsibility.”

  “Mike,” said Benton, “I accept that. But if it’s not for partisan reasons, I don’t understand the secrecy here. We’ve got Kyoto 4 coming up. Surely that’s the forum for this.”

  “You may choose to make it the forum, Joe. That’s your decision now.”

  “I said all through my campaign we have to engage internationally, and I meant it. With respect, Mike, I think failure to engage in multilateral forums was one of the mistakes of your administration and of Bill Shawcross’s, and I think the American people have just shown that they agree.”

  “With respect, Joe, that’s just so much horseshit. The campaign’s over, it’s time to govern. You can say what you like when you don’t have to deliver. Go ahead, deal with it through Kyoto 4 if you want. But you listen to me. I signed Kyoto 3. Bill sent me. Remember? I was the one in Santiago with the pen in my hand.” Mike Gartner sat forward in his chair and stretched out his arm. “This hand right here. Now let me tell you something. There were a hundred and fifty-three other leaders there that day in the Palazzo whatever-the-hell-it-was, and they all signed, every last one, and I swear to you, as they signed those papers, not one of them intended to stick to the obligations they were signing up to. And not one of them did. And that includes the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Brits, and the EuroCore, and whoever the hell else was there. And us as well, I’m not saying it doesn’t. And Kyoto 3 was weak. Remember? We were coming off the back of the recession and it looked like the global economy was doing half the work of emissions control for us. But when the global expansion started up, no one remembered that, and we all just went for growth like we always do. Held the line that new technologies would make everything better without any pain. Voluntary measures were enough, we’d all act honorably, no need for sanctions. The usual Kyoto crap, we’ll all just wait ten years and see where we’ve got to.” Gartner sat back in his chair and shook his head in disgust. “The pace never gets any quicker. A chunk of ice the size of Maine floats off some ice shelf in the Antarctic...Art, where was that again?”

  “The Ronne Ice Shelf, Mr. President. And it was the size of New Hampshire.”

  “Right. And when was that? Eight years ago?”

  “Nine, Mr. President.”

  “Right, nine. The size of New Hampshire. Splash! And what do we do? Same process, same speed. Like a fucking snail that’s only got one gear. So you can listen to me, Joe, and take it from someone who knows, or you can learn it the hard way. Try to do it through Kyoto 4 if you want, just like you promised in your campaign. Spend another two years negotiating while this feedback cycle keeps rampin
g up, and then spend another five years monitoring until it’s obvious everyone’s in breach, and then it’ll be time to start negotiating Kyoto 5 and see where we are then. Go ahead. It’s your show now. You’re the boss.”

  “China’s not the only emitter,” said Benton. “Even if you did a bilateral deal with them, what happens next?”

  “Senator,” said Art Riedl, “what has to happen is for the world’s leading emitters to agree to sharp cuts, even savage cuts, and to show they’re doing it. Action, not words. You get us doing it, you get China doing it, and then you’ve got the leverage to bring the rest of the world on board. No one’s going to believe it’s going to happen if the United States isn’t involved, but you can’t sell this to the American people if the Chinese aren’t on board as well. So that was our strategy. Us and China first, then use that to bring the rest of the world into line. We believe the American people will take the pain if they can see China doing it as well and if there’s a genuine verification mechanism with penalties to back it up. We don’t believe they’ll take the pain for the sake of yet another Kyoto that’s going to turn out to have been ignored by everyone else in ten years time.”

  “How deep were the cuts?” asked Eales.

  Riedl and the president looked at him.

  “The emissions cuts you offered the Chinese, Mr. President. What did you offer them?”

  “We showed them the data,” said Gartner. “They knew why it’s necessary to do something. When it came to the bottom line, we offered an immediate freeze, and a matched point for point emissions reduction over the next seven years. Mutually verified.”

  “How much?”

  “Eighteen percent,” said Gartner.

  Benton didn’t react. Not outwardly. Eighteen percent over such a short time frame was a massive reduction. And all the painless steps to cut emissions had been taken long ago. The economic impact of this would be . . . considerable.

  “The time when we could do this easily is long gone,” said Gartner quietly. “That was thirty years ago. There’s no way to do it easy anymore.”

  “Mike,” said Benton, almost not wanting to hear the answer to the question he was about to ask, “this accelerated rate of change we’ve been talking about—what’s the impact? How bad is it?”

  “The Relocation plan I took to Congress envisaged the abandonment of the majority of the Gulf Coast, parts of southern Florida, the Chesapeake Bay area, parts of the San Francisco Bay area, and sectors of New York and other coastal cities. That was a total of a little over six million people and the congressional requisition was 4.2 trillion over the next ten years.”

  There was silence in the room. Everyone waited for what was coming next. They all knew the numbers Gartner had just listed. Joe Benton had fiercely opposed Gartner’s plan. The estimate of the total population to be relocated, he knew, was too small, and the financial allocation, six percent of the budget projection, was way too low to do anything but condemn those people to poverty. Benton expected to have to double it.

  Gartner took a deep breath. “Magnify it fivefold. And while you’re at it, say good-bye to Miami. The tri-county area will take a category four or better hurricane every two years and the storm surge will drown every living thing all the way to Orlando. And in case you’re wondering, the drought in southern California, its never going to end. We’re talking desert. All up, we’re talking maybe thirty million people, and a cost of twenty-five trillion over the ten year period.”

  Joe Benton stared at him.

  “Art can show you the math.”

  Benton didn’t need to see it. Whatever Gartner said about the cost, he’d have to double it at least. “Is this done, or does it only happen if we don’t get a deal for the emissions cuts you mentioned?”

  “Most of it’s done,” replied Gartner. “Art’s got the exact breakdown. You go spending another five years messing around with Kyoto 4 and it’s all this and then you can add some more.”

  Riedl nodded. “I’ve got those numbers as well.”

  The magnitude of what he was facing left Benton groping for something, anything, to get a handle on it.

  “I’m sorry to dump this in your lap, Joe. Truly I am.”

  Benton didn’t reply. Whatever Gartner said, Benton knew that the chance of cutting a secret deal and announcing it just before the election would have been to the fore in his mind.

  “Mr. President,” said Eales, “can you tell us what the current status of the talks with the Chinese government is?”

  “At the moment we have no talks, Mr. Eales. The latest word out of Beijing is they see no point continuing negotiations with my administration since it’s effectively no longer in power.”

  “Who was in your team?” asked Eales.

  “Art here. Art was the team. No one outside this room even knows we were talking with them.”

  Eales turned to Riedl. “You’ll give me a full briefing?”

  Riedl nodded.

  “Joe,” said the president, “I’m convinced now the Chinese never intended to cut a deal. They were stringing me along. They’re conniving, deceitful bastards, and you can’t trust them further than you can throw ‘em.”

  A perfect match, thought Benton.

  “They figured they’d buy time by letting me think they’d cut a deal before the election. But we had nothing back from them, all right? I want you to understand that. I’m telling you the truth here. Nothing.”

  Benton knew what that meant. Gartner had given the Chinese a proposal for the cuts he had outlined without receiving even a counterproposal in return, so chances were the Chinese would hold on to anything they considered favorable in Gartner’s proposal and demand that as a starting position in further talks.

  “I don’t know how you’re going to play it, Joe. I’m stepping back. I’ve got nine weeks left. I’ll go along with whatever way you want to do it.”

  “Do you think they’ll restart talks now?”

  “With you?”

  Benton nodded.

  “Maybe,” said Gartner, “but they’ll be playing for time. They’ll see if they can get anything out of you. If you ask for anything back, they’ll say you’re not in power yet.”

  Joe Benton thought that was probably right. “What about our allies internationally? Do any of them know about this?”

  Gartner’s lip curled. “Let me give you a word of warning, Joe. Whenever the Europeans say they’ll do something, halve it. That’s how much you’ll get. And you’ll get it about half as fast as they promise it. You want to act quick, you’ve got to go it alone. That’s why we did it like we did. I want you to believe that, Joe. I can only tell you again, you can take this into Kyoto, but that would be a disaster for our country.”

  “Anything else?” said Benton.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “More than enough.”

  “Then we’re done,” said the president. “Art’ll give Mr. Eales the details. We can talk again if you want after that. Just let me know. Anything else happens, I’ll keep you informed.” He stood up.

  Benton stood as well.

  “We have a meeting in a couple of weeks with our staffs. Pretty pictures. I guess you can understand now why I wanted to do this one a little more quietly.”

  ~ * ~

  Outside, a cold fog had descended with the dusk. The limo headed off past bare, sticklike trees.

  Joe Benton thought over what he had been told. “Usually the Republicans just tell you the budget deficit’s going to be twice what they said in the campaign,” he murmured. “But you’ve got to hand it to Mike Gartner. He always goes one better.”

  “He’s been president for four years and vice president for eight,” said Eales. “And he’s got the nerve to tell us now, after the election, that everything’s five times as fucked-up as he admitted. He was vice president when the Ronne Ice Shelf collapsed! What the fuck did he try to do differently afterwards?” Eales turned and looked back. The house where they had met the president had l
ong disappeared from view. “What a piece of shit.”

  Benton didn’t disagree.

  “He never had a chance with the Chinese,” said Eales in the same disgusted tone. “They would have played him like a cat with a mouse. But that’s Mike Gartner for you. Hold the whole country to ransom for seven months just to try to keep his sick butt in the White House.”

  Benton nodded. That was exactly what he thought. That was exactly why Gartner had kept everything secret.

  They rode on in silence.

  Or was it? Benton saw the image of Mike Gartner thrusting out his hand toward him, the same hand with which he had signed the Kyoto 3 treaty in Santiago. He heard him saying that it was easy to talk from the sidelines, when you didn’t have to get things done. And Art Riedl, explaining their strategy. It was a strategy, Benton had to give them that. And he could almost have believed their reasoning if everything in their past didn’t show they were as much a pair of lying, deceitful, conniving bastards as anyone they could possibly have come up against on the Chinese side.