The admission of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands as states. Because all six are either majority-minority or island territories with American citizens, they will undoubtedly elect senators with great interest in forestalling sea level rise while acting as a balance to sparsely populated rural states like Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Alaska.
Tony hated this as much as I did.
“This is all so fucking ridiculous. Everyone wants their fucking toy. She wants a toy, he wants a toy, you want a toy, and, and, and—”
He sputtered, unable to expel any more fury, and I quickly took over. “I concur, Congresswoman. What you’ve described is well beyond our purview.”
Secretary Rathbone said: “It sounds mostly like you want to buy yourself new votes, Tracy.”
The congresswoman whipped her head back and forth, her fleshy cheeks vibrating with the passion I’d always admired in her. “We have to engage citizens in the process of saving their own society. Democracy has a chance to prove itself here; that in a crisis it can be creative and decisive. This will cement the bill’s democratic legitimacy as soon as the next election. In World War Two, one of the foremost strategies was labor mobilization, and the best way to mobilize labor is high-paying jobs in unionized workplaces, so people are invested in what they’re producing in a moment of rapid displacement and economic change—I feel like this is beyond obvious.”
Alice clucked her tongue. “Cool. Well. You can forget it. We’re not touching this bullshit.”
“Then you won’t have the votes of my caucus. Not with indemnification attached. It’s that simple.”
The room was silent after the congresswoman said that. She controlled the bulk of the votes we’d already assumed and were counting on. Finally, Admiral Dahms spoke up.
“You know, I have to say I agree with the congresswoman.”
All heads turned to him.
Said Ms. Li Song: “Really?”
Dahms nodded. “The Pastor may have won this election, as the rules define it. Yet we have a different man sitting in the White House. Before that, my former boss, Vic Love, won with a psyops campaign and behaved like Saddam Hussein. Even Mary Randall relied on standard Republican voter suppression. For too long I’ve watched our politicians settle for the ability to dominate. But now we must inspire. Obviously, I’m a patriot. I’ve spent my whole life in service to this country and the ideals it stands for. If we truly do believe that our nation has the power to lead the world in this moment of utmost peril, well, we had better act like it.”
Silence fell over the room as it became clear we would accept the congresswoman’s agenda.
What we delivered to President Hamby and Congress, this “Frankenstein clusterfuck,” as Secretary Rathbone called it, would face opposition, we understood as much. Upon returning to Washington, we found a city gritting its teeth, every pocket muttering terror about what our task force had delivered to the fragmented and barely legitimate lawmaking bodies. The Washington Post summarized the reaction: PRESIDENT HAMBY, CONGRESS RECOIL FROM AMBITIOUS PLAN. While Secretary Rathbone worked on the president, Jane and Haniya were dispatched to alleviate the concerns of the Climate Caucus, which was furious at the indemnification clause. Tony, Admiral Dahms, Ms. Li Song, and I were sent into the teeth of the Republican resistance. At this point, a third of its members had formed the “L2P Caucus,” which stood for “Loyal to The Pastor.” They were calling for an armed revolution to depose Hamby and install the rightful winner of the election. Obviously, we did not expect to have their votes. This left scant targets for persuasion.
We spent a day developing our pitch before our first meeting with Nevada senator Marlon Hacker, a Mormon who went directly from his missionary work in Taiwan to the Nevada Senate. He had an enormous entourage of young aides, all equally blond, polite, and friendly. They gathered around him and seemed to blink and smile a great deal. Alice McCowen, who insisted on overseeing our effort, leaned over to whisper to me: “We call these creepy Mormon robots ‘the Hackers.’ Don’t stick a finger too close to their teeth.”
I began the presentation by walking Senator Hacker through the financial crisis, the fecklessness of the bailouts, mergers, and stopgaps, and the threat of sea level rise that was keeping the markets from stabilizing. Admiral Dahms then took over to highlight the security threats rapidly developing as the country spun through financial chaos into depression; the violence of Governor Justis in Kansas; the riots, looting, and street battles being waged in cities. Those dispossessed by western wildfires were filling up abandoned big-box stores and warehouse logistics centers, whole tent cities of the homeless were sprouting up across Nevada. These images of the internally displaced, the shipwrecked of the planet’s mightiest empire, trudging down desert highways, carrying babies on their backs, pulling rolling suitcases across potholed roads, changed the senator’s face. His expression went from one of feigned concern to a more honest fear. Finally, Tony took center stage.
“Senator, we are out of time. We need to stabilize markets, backstop people’s livelihoods, and begin decarbonizing as fast as the economy can bear. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s instability is calling into question East Antarctica, and if that were to go, it would make a major economic depression look like a relatively minor problem. There’s enough water in East Antarctica to drown a third of the landmass of the United States—”
Much to Tony’s annoyance, one of the Hackers interrupted: “We had a question about the Capital Transition Authority. There’s nearly $300 billion set aside for…?”
“To move the capital away from D.C.” Tony tried to get back to his point about East Antarctica, but the aide pressed on.
“Moving it where?”
“To Cleveland.”
Senator Hacker raised a bright blond eyebrow. “You want to move the capital of the United States to Cleveland?”
I interjected: “The capital cannot remain in D.C. Already, the district is experiencing nearly one hundred tidal flooding events each year, and we’re expecting that number to double by 2055. It is impractical to have a capital in a city that’s flooding every other day.”
Senator Hacker: “But Cleveland?”
Tony whipped his hand in a “wrap-it-up” motion. “Property is cheap, there are plenty of neighborhoods that can be developed, and frankly the future of the country will depend on the Great Lakes as a water source and trading route. It’s also as insulated from extreme weather and sea level rise as you’re going to find.”
“I’m sorry.” One of the aides stood and jammed his finger at Tony. “You expect us to swallow all this bullshit without so much as allowing a rider?”
Cross talk erupted as Senator Hacker and his staff began vying to expel all their objections at once, while Tony, Alice, Dahms, and Li Song all began firing back. I lowered my head and waited for them to quiet, but it became too much. Finally, I spoke up with more volume than I’m used to: “It’s all so familiar.”
They stopped arguing to look at me, the efficacy of my tactic ever effective.
“The famines, the violence, and the stagnation of growth all point to a vicious economic contraction, one that won’t stop in any of our lifetimes. We’ve recklessly burned through three hundred years of fossilized energy to build an immense house of cards. Industrial civilization has grown to unprecedented scale and therefore the costs of disintegration will be at a scale not previously contemplated. We are already seeing intimations of breakdown in the atrocities of the League or the Kansas governor essentially declaring himself king or The Pastor all but demanding his followers massacre his way into office. These are the early signs that the rule of law is coming undone. One can always count on the fact that there are many, many people who very much want to see the collapse of centralized authority because they believe they will prosper amid a rewiring of all the known rules. Mass media have created a distorted perception of what breakdown will actually look like. They believe it will be orderly and quick, a wall of fire advancing, while others indulge in comforting fantasies that they will return to subsistence farming and holistic medicinal practices. But the truth is that for all of us, it will be grueling and unfamiliar, hunger and thirst and disease will be constant, and many will watch loved ones raped, tortured, and murdered by men who have the stomach for unlimited violence. To be clear, everyone in this room, in the congressional chambers, and in the financial, plutocratic, and corporate elite have everything to lose in this scenario. They will become the first—and easiest—targets.”