Why won’t confidence be restored with standard Keynesian policy? The answer is, again, sea level rise. Specifically, the dynamics of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which in the past five years has undergone a rapid transformation. To this day, modeling remains very primitive for the damage mechanics of ice shelf loss, but we can conclude that sea level rise will be more severe than anticipated because the Ghost Ridge appears to be structurally weaker than was once thought. (The ridge is a buildup of sediment forty-five miles behind the Thwaites Glacier’s initial grounding line that was once expected to “catch” the glacier so that it would not slide rapidly into the ocean.) This is particularly bad news for the US, because one thing sea level rise models all agree on is that the Atlantic Seaboard will be one of the most highly impacted regions in the world. When an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull weakens, which causes the earth beneath the sheets to rebound and counterintuitively lowers sea level locally. However, this means increased sea level rise for some distant locale, in this case, the metro regions stretching from Maine to Florida. This is to say nothing of steric changes, as ocean temperatures heat up, which they are now doing faster than at any time in Earth’s history, expanding the water. Confidence cannot be restored because sea level rise really may wipe out more wealth in one generation than both world wars and all the great economic crises combined. The question is, How do we stop such a rational panic?
To restore confidence globally, we must first restore it in the American economy where the crisis arose. Here we have one vital force on our side: The US government, more than any other, has ample room to maneuver. For now. But we must take advantage of this window and devise a top-down approach to defending the coasts. In some instances, this may mean hardening measures like seawalls, but more likely it will mean a program of “managed retreat.” However, for that policy to work we must be able to compellingly reassure panicking markets that we have a plan to, once and for all, arrest, and at some distant point, reverse, catastrophic greenhouse warming. Even if we do somehow manage to accomplish this rather daunting geo-economic goal, we will still be left with the fallout—a period of economic stagnation without precedent, and one that may drive deep social and political divisions to the breaking point. In a world of such severe apartheid, suddenly left without the capacity to keep order, it’s hard not to imagine the impoverished half executing the most vicious revolution the world has ever seen or the wealthiest quintile performing one last brutal all-encompassing act of genocide to save itself from the dark and harrowing future that’s in store.
I looked from Secretary Rathbone to Ms. McCowen. Both appeared ill but not all that shocked. When giving voice to the consequences of a worst-case scenario, I realized I would have to work on my delivery.
“You see the difficulty, I gather. The problem is so vast in scale and complexity that incremental reform is no longer an option. The strategy necessary to avert global economic meltdown will, by necessity, alter human society forever.”
McCowen slapped her thighs twice and clapped, and then continued to do so. She began singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Rathbone looked unamused. When she was done, he asked:
“If you had to put a team together to design a policy—I’m talking about something that will shock the markets back into functioning order like a fucking defibrillator—who would you have in mind?”
“I’d prefer to keep it extremely small. I have several suggestions, including Jane Tufariello and my sister, Hani, who’s been working in this policy realm at the Foote Institute for many years. And of course—”
“Tony.”
“He literally did write the book on this scenario.”
Alice offered no reaction when I brought up Jane, but she made quite a face at Tony’s name.
Rathbone nodded. “Right, right, but I’ll warn you: Industry will be there. Hamby won’t have it any other way. Can you be ready by tomorrow?”
“Ready for what?”
Alice brimmed with excitement: “The president gets on TV to announce the formation of this crisis team—call it whatever you want. He says we’re going to lock ourselves in a room and come out with a plan of overwhelming force to save us all from this nightmare. That sound fun?”
Said Rathbone, with a smile from the gallows: “Call it a task force to unfuck the world.”
What I did not realize was that the Task Force to Unfuck the World, as it quickly became known, would not convene in Washington, D.C., but at a resort in Sun Valley, Idaho. There were too many security concerns in D.C., as protests and riots gripped the metro area nightly. It had not escaped my notice that many of the capital’s elite—senators, CEOs, top lawyers, lobbyists—were also conveniently convening meetings and conferences at ultra-high-end resorts under somewhat specious pretenses. Peter explained that these vast vacation properties could be easily secured and were far from the simmering streets of a newly unemployed and frightened populace. I left Forrest under Peter’s care, while Haniya and I flew on a government jet to Sun Valley.
Arriving at dawn, the sun’s startling yellow spires pierced the gaps in the mountains to the west as we descended into a low brown valley. I’d barely unpacked before aides were knocking on my door, ushering Hani and myself to a most ostentatious boardroom. No one had eaten or slept, but we took our designated seats, with Ms. McCowen and Secretary Rathbone at the head of a conference table and a press pool snapping pictures. There was Tony, looking quite disheveled, sallow-skinned, and grumpy; my friend and mentor Dr. Tufariello had changed her hair—she now sported a configuration of cornrows that swept gracefully back from the left side of her head; Joe Otero, aide to former Senate Majority Leader Doup and consummate Republican insider, dispatched to represent a political party he did not necessarily speak for, retained his graying punk rock ponytail; and Rear Admiral Michael Dahms, former commander of Pacific Command and a holdover as director of the Office of Climate Security, briefly joked with the press that he was “here representing that full-fledged pinko organization called the Pentagon,” which got hearty laughs. I admired his ability to deflect from the fact that most of the government’s scientific capacity was not represented. No one from NASA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Academy of Sciences, or the Council on Environmental Quality. Vic Love had intentionally left many of these offices vacant and concentrated their power under the fiefdom of Admiral Dahms. Hani sat beside him, looking unfazed and more well rested than myself, for she never seemed particularly impressed with the powerful circles she now frequented. Finally, sitting beside me was Emii Li Song, executive director of the Sustainable Future Coalition, looking irradiant in a tan skirt and white blouse, her hair complicatedly elevated. Tony, in hindsight, showed remarkable restraint. He waited until the press pool had left the room before he exploded: