Carefully, controlling himself with a visible effort, Enron said to no one in particular, “Let me make the thinking of myself and my editors clear, if you will.” He took a deep breath. A prepared speech was coming up, Carpenter knew. Enron was speaking for the record. “We accept the generally held scientific position that the damage to the world’s environment during the industrial age is irreversible: that the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels over a period of two or three hundred years created degrees of carbon-dioxide and nitrogen-oxide emission far beyond proper tolerance, that this has caused gradual but eventually significant global warming; that the changes in ocean temperature and pressure which have resulted from that warming have caused release of oceanic methane into the atmosphere, further exacerbating the warming patterns; and that the buildup of the so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere plus the locking away of additional quantities of such pollutants in ground storage and in the form of hypertrophied vegetation stimulated by a CO2 surplus has been such that things are destined to get worse before they get better, because the stored gases that were locked away in the period of environmental abuse are destined to emerge inescapably from storage over the course of time and are in fact being released even now through ground outgassing and the decay of vegetable matter. I think this is a fair statement of the situation.”
“The ozone,” Carpenter said.
“Yes, of course. That, too. I should not have neglected to add that the damage to the ozone layer through the use of chlorofluorocarbons and similar substances in the twentieth century has brought about a serious intensification of incoming solar radiation, adding to the problem of global warming. Et cetera, et cetera. But I think I have sufficiently set the ground for our discussion. I need hardly go further with this summary of our many problems—to list, eh, the many various feedback mechanisms that have operated to make a bad situation worse, for example? All this is old news to you. There is no disagreement that we are entering a time of great peril.”
“Completely true. The planet must be protected,” said Jolanda Bermudez in a spacy voice, as though delivering news bulletins from Venus.
“I agree absolutely with Jolanda,” said Isabelle Martine. “We have to come to our senses. The whole planet is in jeopardy! Something must be done to save it!”
Enron smiled icily. “I beg to disagree. The planet, Ms. Martine, is not what is in danger. It makes no difference to the planet, does it, whether the rain falls in the Sahara Desert or in the agricultural plains of the middle of North America? So the Sahara ceases to be a desert and your Kansas and Nebraska become one instead. That is very interesting for the farmers of Kansas and Nebraska and for the nomadic herdsmen of the Sahara, yes. But what is it to the planet? The planet has no use for the wheat that used to be produced in Kansas and Nebraska. The atmosphere contains much less oxygen and nitrogen than it did a century ago, and a great deal more carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. Why should the planet be concerned? There was a time when there was no oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere at all. The planet survived it quite well. The polar ice caps melt and much of the low-lying shoreline of the world is drowned. The planet is indifferent. It is all the same thing to the planet whether the Japanese live along the coast of certain islands at the edge of Asia or are forced to take refuge in other, higher places. The planet does not care about the Japanese. Nor does the planet need saving. People have been parroting this nonsense about saving the planet for I don’t know how long, a hundred, a hundred fifty years. The planet will be okay. We’re in trouble. The issue, Ms. Martine, Ms. Bermudez, is not saving the planet: it is saving ourselves. Earth will go serenely on, with or without oxygen. But we will die.” Enron smiled as though he were speaking of the outcome of some sports event. “We are, of course, taking certain steps to save ourselves.” He held up the fingers of his right hand and ticked items off with the index finger of his left. “Firstly, we have tried to limit our emission of the so-called greenhouse gases. Too late. They continue to emerge from their storage places in the oceans and the land surface, and nothing can hold that process back. Our air grows steadily less breathable. We are faced with the possibility that before very long we will have to evacuate Earth entirely.”
“No!” Isabelle Martine cried. “What a cowardly solution that would be! The thing we need to do is to stay here and regain control of our own environment!”
“But there are those,” said Enron with merciless restraint, “who are convinced that evacuation is our only recourse. And so—secondly, if I may continue, Ms. Martine—we have filled the nearby zones of outer space with dozens, hundreds, of artificial satellite worlds with agreeable artificial climates, and built a few domed encampments on Mars and the moons of Jupiter.”
“I do sometimes think the habitats are really the only answer,” Jolanda Bermudez said, dreamily cutting in once again. “I’ve often considered moving up there myself, if all else fails. Some friends of mine in Los Angeles are very interested in L-5 resettlement.” She seemed to be speaking entirely to herself.
Enron, caught up in the momentum of his own monologue, ignored her. “The orbital settlements are a notable achievement; but each one has extremely limited capacity, and they are very costly to construct. Obviously we could never afford to transport the entire population of Earth to those small refuges in space. There is still another evacuation option, however, one which at the moment seems even less feasible: the proposal to discover and colonize a New Earth of planetary size in some other solar system, where human life can get a second chance.”
Isabella snorted. “That’s just foolishness. A dumb crazy fantasy.”
“Indeed, so it appears,” said Enron reasonably. “As I understand it, we have no workable stardrive, nor have we yet been able to discover any extrasolar planets, let alone one that would be suitable for human life.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Rhodes said, just barely at the threshold of audibility.
Everyone turned to look at him. Rhodes, obviously disconcerted by the attention he had drawn to himself, hastily gulped the dregs of his most recent drink and signaled for yet another.
“We have found a planet, you say?” Enron asked.
“We have a stardrive,” Rhodes said. “May have, that is. I understand some considerable breakthroughs have been achieved lately, and that important tests are coming up.”
“This stardrive—you say ‘we.’ It is a project of Samurai Industries, then?” Enron asked. He was perspiring, suddenly. His eyes revealed a greater degree of interest, perhaps, than he might have wanted to display.
Rhodes said, “No, actually, I was using ‘we’ collectively, to mean the human race in general. In fact the rumor going around is that it’s Kyocera-Merck that is well along on some sort of a starship project. Not us.”
“But surely Samurai would want to be involved in a similar project too,” said Enron, “if only to remain competitive.”
“As a matter of fact, you’re probably right,” Rhodes said. And winced, as though someone had kicked him under the table. Carpenter saw him glower briefly at Isabelle. “I mean, there’s a rumor to that effect going around as well,” he said, after a moment, sounding newly evasive. “I wouldn’t really know whether there’s any substance to it. We hear things like that all the time. —Of course you understand that any kind of Samurai stardrive research would involve a completely different division of the company from mine.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” said Enron. He was silent for a while, poking purposelessly at the food on his plate, obviously considering the thing that Rhodes had allowed to slip out.