Termination Shock

“Setting aside the political dimension,” Daia said coolly, “what about actual, physical reality? Will geoengineering damage crop yields in Punjab? Or . . . Bangladesh? Hubei? Iowa? It can’t be good for everyone, everywhere.”

“I would, of course, defer to Eshma, who actually knows what she’s talking about,” said Mark, with a glance down to that end of the table. “But when you put it that way . . .”

“Nothing can be good for everyone, everywhere,” Eshma confirmed. “The models tell us that much.”

Mark continued. “And yet uncontrolled global warming will certainly kill, as T.R. points out, hundreds of millions or billions. We can’t stop it from happening in any other way.”

“Even if we could get China and India to stop burning shit tomorrow, and crash their economies for the sake of Mother Earth,” T.R. said, “it wouldn’t undo what we’ve done, as a civilization, to the atmosphere since we first worked out how to turn fossil fuel into work.”

“People will ask, why not put the same amount of effort and engineering cleverness into removing that carbon from the atmosphere?” Daia said.

“And are you asking that, Daia? Or merely pointing out that others will?” Mark asked.

“Both, I suppose. I really am genuinely curious.”

“Let’s put a pin in that, I got a neat little demo,” T.R. said. He thumbed a speed dial on his phone and muttered, “Yeah, could you bring in the bell jars?”

“This is only part of the demo we’ll be showing to the media tomorrow,” T.R. said, a few minutes later. “We are working on a bigger presentation. But I thought you might get a kick out of it.”

“Could you first say more about the media?” Saskia inquired. “I was told—”

“All NDAed, all embargoed. As my people discussed with your people when we set this up,” T.R. assured her. “Sooner or later, according to your man Willem, you’re going to make it public that you visited the site.”

“We have to,” Saskia said.

“The agreement was, you can do that on your own timetable. That agreement stands, Your Majesty. And it’s up to you whether you take a pro-, anti-, or neutral position.”

T.R. seemed rattled by how Saskia had just reacted, to the point where she now felt it necessary to put him at ease. “My job is an unusual one,” Saskia said. “The boundary between personal and public is complicated and somewhat ambiguous. One moment I am enjoying a lovely dinner with interesting people and the next I’m having to think about media. Pardon the interruption.”

“Pardon me for letting that dirty word out of my mouth!” T.R. answered. He glanced awkwardly at Daia (who had been a media personality) and then at the rest of the guests, who had fallen silent when one of T.R.’s aides had rolled in a stand supporting a pair of glass bell jars. Beneath one was a heap of powdered sulfur—a miniature version of the huge pile they’d seen earlier. Beneath the other was a mound of powder the same size, but black as black could be. “Two elements,” T.R. said, “alike in dignity! The yellow one needs no introduction. You’ll have guessed that the black one is carbon. Both alter the climate. Carbon makes it get warmer by trapping the sun’s rays. Sulfur cools it by bouncing them back into space.”

“We’ve been over this, T.R.,” Bob reminded him.

“Sorry. Preacher man gotta preach. What’s not so obvious is the incredible difference in leverage between these two substances. To put enough of this stuff”—he slapped the carbon bell jar, and his wedding ring made a sharp noise on the glass—“into the atmosphere to bring the temp up a couple degrees, we had to put a large part of the human race to work burning shit for two centuries. We chopped down forests, dug up peat bogs, excavated huge coal mines, emptied oil reserves the size of mountains. Hell, in Afghanistan they even burn shit. All that disappeared into the air. The total weight of excess carbon we put into the atmosphere is about three hundred gigatons. All those trees, all that coal, all the oil and peat and shit. Now. To reverse that change in temperature—to bring it back down by two degrees—how much sulfur do you think we need to put into the stratosphere? A comparable amount? Not even close. A smaller amount? Yes, but that don’t do it justice. Because sulfur has leverage like you wouldn’t believe. This amount of carbon here”—he once again did the wedding ring thwack on the bell jar full of black stuff—“could be neutralized, in terms of its effect on global temperature, by an amount of sulfur too small to be seen by the naked eye. So small that we couldn’t even demo it in these bell jars unless I rolled out a microscope. Tomorrow you’ll see the ratio. A boxcar of coal, and a cube of sulfur you can put in the palm of your hand.”

“You’re saying that removing the carbon from the atmosphere would be a much bigger project than putting sulfur into it,” Saskia said.