Green Earth

The Khembalis looked pleased. Sridar looked impassive but faintly amused, as he often did.

Just as he was leaving, Phil spotted Charlie and stopped. “Charlie! Good to see you at last!”

Grinning hugely, he came back and shook his blushing staffer’s hand. “So you laughed in the President’s face!” He turned to the Khembalis: “This man burst out laughing in the President’s face! I’ve always wanted to do that!”

The Khembalis nodded neutrally.

“So what did it feel like?” Phil asked Charlie. “And how did it go over?”

Charlie, still blushing, said, “Well, it felt involuntary, to tell the truth. Like a sneeze. Joe was really tickling me. And as far as I could tell, it went over okay. The President looked pleased. He was trying to make me laugh, so when I did, he laughed too.”

“Yeah I bet, because at that point he had you.”

“Well, yes. Anyway he laughed, and then Joe woke up and we had to get a bottle in him before the Secret Service guys did something rash.”

Phil laughed and then shook his head, growing more serious. “Well, it’s too bad, I guess. But what could you do. You were ambushed. He loves to do that. Hopefully it won’t cost us. It might even help. But I’m late, I’ve got to go. You hang in there.” And he put a hand to Charlie’s arm, said good-bye again to the Khembalis, and hustled out the door.

The Khembalis gathered around Charlie, looking cheerful. “Where is Joe? How is it he is not with you?”

“I really couldn’t bring him to this thing I was at, so my friend Asta from Gymboree is looking after him. Actually I have to get back to him soon,” checking his watch. “But come on, tell me how it went.”

They all followed Charlie into his cubicle by the stairwell, stuffing it with their maroon robes (they had dressed formally for Phil, Charlie noted) and their strong brown faces. They still looked pleased.

“Well?” Charlie said.

“It went very well,” Drepung said, and nodded happily. “He asked us many questions about Khembalung. He visited Khembalung seven years ago, and met Padma and others at that time. He was very interested, very sympathetic. And best of all, he told us he would help us.”

“He did? That’s great! What did he say, exactly?”

Drepung squinted, remembering. “He said—‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

Sucandra and Padma nodded, confirming this.

“Those were his exact words?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

Charlie and Sridar exchanged a glance. Who was going to tell them?

Sridar said carefully, “Those were indeed his exact words,” thus passing the ball to Charlie.

Charlie sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Drepung asked.

“Well …” Charlie glanced at Sridar again.

“Tell them,” Sridar said.

Charlie said, “What you have to understand is that no congressperson likes to say no.”

“No?”

“No. They don’t.”

“They never say no,” Sridar clarified.

“Never?”

“Never.”

“They like to say yes,” Charlie explained. “People come to them, asking for things—favors, votes—consideration of one kind or another. When they say yes, people go away happy. Everyone is happy.”

“Votes,” Sridar expanded. “They say yes and it means votes. Sometimes one yes can mean fifty thousand votes. So they just keep saying yes.”

“That’s true,” Charlie admitted. “Some say yes no matter what they really mean. Others, like our Senator Chase, are more honest.”

“Without, however, actually ever saying no,” Sridar added.

“In effect they only answer the questions they can say yes to. The other questions they avoid in one way or another.”

“Right,” Drepung said. “But he said …”

“He said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

Drepung frowned. “So that means no?”

“Well, you know, in circumstances where they can’t get out of answering the question in some other way—”

“Yes!” Sridar interrupted. “It means no.”

“Well …” Charlie tried to temporize.

“Come on, Charlie.” Sridar shook his head. “You know it’s true. It’s true for all of them. Yes means maybe; I’ll see what I can do means no. It means, not a chance. It means, I can’t believe you’re asking me this question, but since you are, this is how I will say no.”

“He will not help us?” Drepung asked.

“He will if he sees a way that will work,” Charlie declared. “I’ll keep on him about it.”

Drepung said, “You’ll see what you can do.”

“Yes—but I mean really.”

Sridar smiled sardonically at Charlie’s discomfiture. “And Phil’s the most environmentally aware senator of all, isn’t that right Charlie?”

“Well, yeah. That’s definitely true.”

The Khembalis pondered this. Drepung was now frowning.

“We too will see what we can do,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

THE CAPITAL IN SCIENCE

Robot submarines cruise the depths, doing oceanography. Finally oceanographers have almost as much data as meteorologists. Among other things they monitor a deep layer of relatively warm water that flows from the Atlantic into the Arctic (ALTEX, the Atlantic Layer Tracking Experiment).

But they are not as good at it as the whales. White beluga whales, living their lives in the open ocean, have been fitted with sensors for recording temperature, salinity, and nitrate content, matched with a GPS record and a depth meter. Up and down in the blue world they sport, diving deep into the black realm below, coming back up for air, recording data all the while. Casper the Friendly Ghost, Whitey Ford, The Woman in White, Moby Dick, all the rest: they swim to their own desires, up and down endlessly within their immense territories, fast and supple, continuous and thorough, capable of great depths, pale flickers in the blackest blue, the bluest black. Then back up for air. Our cousins. White whales help us to know this world. The data they are collecting make it clear that the Atlantic’s deep warm layer is attenuating. And so the Gulf Stream is slowing down.

The rest of Frank’s stay in San Diego was a troubled time. The encounter with Marta had put him in a black mood that he could not shake.

He tried to look for a place to live when he returned in the fall, checking out some real estate pages in the paper, but it was discouraging. He saw that he would have to rent an apartment first, and take the time to look before trying to buy something. It was going to be hard, maybe impossible, to find a house he both liked and could afford. He had some financial problems. And it took a very considerable income to buy a house in north San Diego these days. He and Marta had bought a perfect couple’s bungalow in Cardiff, but they had sold it when they split, adding greatly to the acrimony. Now the region was more expensive than a mere professor could afford. Extra income would be essential.

So he looked at some rentals in North County, and then in the afternoons he went to the empty office on campus, meeting with two postdocs who were still working for him in his absence. He also talked with the department chair about what classes he would teach in the fall. It was all very tiresome.

And worse than tiresome, when a letter appeared in his department mailbox from the UCSD Technology Transfer Office. Pulse quickening, he ripped it open and scanned it, then got on the phone.

“Hi Delphina, it’s Frank Vanderwal here. I’ve just gotten a letter from your review committee, can you please tell me what this is about?”

“Oh hello, Dr. Vanderwal. Let me see … the oversight committee on faculty outside income wanted to ask you about some income you received from stock in Torrey Pines Generique. Anything over two thousand dollars a year has to be reported, and they didn’t hear anything from you.”

“I’m at NSF this year, all my stocks are in a blind trust. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Oh, that’s right, isn’t it. Maybe … just a second. Here it is. Maybe they knew that. I’m not sure. I’m looking at their memo here … ah. They’ve been informed you’re going to be rejoining Torrey Pines when you get back, and—”

“Wait, what? How the hell could they hear that?”

“I don’t know—”

“Because it isn’t true! I’ve been talking to colleagues at Torrey Pines, but all that is private. So how could they possibly have heard that?”

“I said, I don’t know.” Delphina was getting tired of his indignation. No doubt her job put her at the wrong end of a lot of indignation.

He said, “Come on, Delphina. We went over all this when I helped start Torrey Pines, and I haven’t forgotten. Faculty are allowed to spend up to twenty percent of work time on outside consulting. Whatever I make doing that is mine, it only has to be reported. So even if I did go back to Torrey Pines, what’s wrong with that? I wouldn’t be joining their board, and I wouldn’t use more than twenty percent of my time!”

“That’s good—”

“And most of it happens in my head anyway, so even if I did spend more time on it, how are you going to know? Are you going to read my mind?”

Delphina sighed. “Of course we can’t read your mind. In the end it’s an honor system. Obviously. We ask people what’s going on when we see things in the financial reports, to remind them what the rules are.”

“I don’t appreciate the implications of that. Tell the oversight committee what the situation is on my stocks, and ask them to do their research properly before they bother people.”

“All right. Sorry about that.” She did not seem perturbed.

Frank went out for a walk around the campus. Usually this soothed him, but now he was too upset. Who had told the oversight committee that he was planning to rejoin Torrey Pines? And why? Would somebody at Torrey Pines have made a call? Only Derek knew for sure, and he wouldn’t do it.

But others must have heard about it. Or could have deduced his intention after his visit. That had been only a few days before, but enough time had passed for someone to make a call. Sam Houston, maybe, wanting to stay head science advisor?

Or Marta?

Disturbed at the thought, at all these machinations, he found himself wishing he were back in D.C. That was shocking, because when he was in D.C. he was always desperate to return to San Diego, biding his time until his return, at which point his real life would recommence. But it was undeniable; here he was in San Diego, and he wanted to be in D.C. Something was seriously wrong.

Part of it must have been the fact that he was not really back in his San Diego life, but only previewing it. He didn’t have a home, he was still on leave, his days were not quite full. That left him wandering a bit, as he was now. And that was unlike him.

Okay—what would he do with free time if he lived here?

He would go surfing.

Good idea. His possessions were stowed in a storage unit in Encinitas, so he drove there and got his surfing gear, then returned to the parking lot at Cardiff reef, at the south end of Cardiff-by-the-Sea. A few minutes’ observation while he pulled on his long-john wetsuit (getting too small for him) revealed that an ebb tide and a south swell were combining for some good waves, breaking at the outermost reef. There was a little crowd of surfers and bodyboarders out there.

Happy at the sight, Frank walked into the water, which was very cool for midsummer, just as they all said. It never got as warm as it used to. But it felt so good now that he ran out and dove through a wave, whooping as he emerged. He sat in the water and pulled on his booties, velcroed the ankle strap of the board cord to him, took off paddling. The ocean tasted like home.

Cardiff reef was a very familiar break to him, and nothing had changed. He had often surfed here with Marta, but that had little to do with it. The waves were eternal, and Cardiff reef with its point break was like an old friend who always said the same things. He was home. This was what made San Diego his home—not the people or the jobs or the unaffordable houses, but this experience of being in the ocean, which for so many years of his youth had been the central experience of his life, everything else colorless by comparison, until he had discovered climbing.

As he paddled, caught waves, and rode the lefts in long ecstatic seconds, and then worked to get back outside, he wondered again about this strangely powerful feeling of salt water as home. There must be an evolutionary reason for such joy at being cast forward by a wave. Whatever; it was a lot of fun. And made him feel vastly better.

Then it was time to go. He took one last ride, and rather than kicking out when the fast part was over, rode the broken wave straight in toward the shore.

He lay in the shallows and let the hissing whitewater shove him around. Back and forth, ebb and flow. Grooming by ocean.

“Are you okay?”

He jerked his head up. It was Marta, on her way out.

“Oh, hi. Yeah I’m okay.”

“What’s this, stalking me now?”

“No,” then realizing this might be a little bit true: “No!”

He stared at her, getting angry. She stared back.

“I’m just catching some waves,” he said, mouth tight. “You’ve got no reason to say such a thing to me.”

“No? Then why did you ask me out the other day?”

“A mistake, obviously. I thought it might do some good to talk.”

“Last year, maybe. But you didn’t want to then. You didn’t want to so much that you ran off to NSF instead. Now it’s too late. So just leave me alone, Frank.”

“I am!”

“Leave me alone.”

She turned and ran into the surf, diving onto her board and paddling hard. When she got out far enough she sat up on her board and balanced, looking outward.

Women in wetsuits looked funny, Frank thought as he watched her. Not just the obvious, but also the subtler differences in body morphology were accentuated. He could tell the difference from as far away as he could see people at all. Every surfer could.

What did that mean? That he was in thrall to a woman who despised him? That he had messed up the main relationship of his life and his best chance so far for reproductive success? That sexual dimorphism was a powerful driver in the urge to reproduction? That he was a slave to his sperm, and an idiot?

All of the above.

His good mood shattered, he hauled himself to his feet. He stripped off the booties and long john, toweled off at his rental car, drove back up to his storage unit, and dropped off his gear. Returned to his hotel room, showered, checked out, and drove down the coast highway to the airport, feeling like an exile, even here on his own home ground.

Something was deeply, deeply wrong.

He checked in the car, got on the plane to Dallas. Waiting in Dallas he watched America walk by. Who were these people who could live so placidly while the world fell into an acute global environmental crisis? Experts at denial. Experts at filtering their information. Many of those walking by went to church on Sundays, believed in God, voted Republican, spent their time shopping and watching TV. Obviously nice people. The world was doomed.

He settled in his next plane seat, feeling more and more disgusted and angry. NSF was part of it; they weren’t doing a damn thing to help. He got out his laptop, turned it on, and called up a new file. He started to write.

Critique of NSF, first draft. Private to Diane Chang.

NSF was established to support basic scientific research, and it is generally given high marks for that. But its budget has never surpassed ten billion dollars a year, in an overall economy of some ten trillion. It is to be feared that as things stand, NSF is simply too small to have any real impact.

Meanwhile humanity is exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity for our species, badly damaging the biosphere. Neoliberal economics cannot cope with this situation, and indeed, with its falsely exteriorized costs, was designed in part to disguise it. If the Earth were to suffer a catastrophic anthropogenic extinction event over the next twenty years, which it will, American business would continue to focus on its quarterly profit and loss. There is no economic mechanism for dealing with catastrophe. And yet government and the scientific community are not tackling this situation either, indeed both have consented to be run by neoliberal economics, an obvious pseudoscience. We might as well agree to be governed by astrologers. Everyone at NSF knows this is the situation, and yet no one does anything about it. They don’t try to instigate the saving of the biosphere, they don’t even call for certain kinds of mitigation projects. They just wait and see what comes in. It is a ridiculously passive position.

Why such passivity, you ask? Because NSF is chicken! It’s a chicken with its smart little head stuck in the sand like an ostrich! It’s a chicken ostrich (fix). It’s afraid to take on Congress, it’s afraid to take on business, it’s afraid to take on the American people. Free market fundamentalists are dragging us back to some dismal feudal eternity and destroying everything in the process, all while we have the technological means to feed everyone, house everyone, clothe everyone, doctor everyone, educate everyone—the ability to end suffering and want as well as ecological collapse is right here at hand, and yet NSF continues to dole out its little grants, fiddling while Rome burns!!!

Well whatever nothing to be done about it, I’m sure you’re thinking poor Frank Vanderwal has spent a year in the swamp and has gone crazy as a result, and that is true, but what I’m saying is still right, the world is in big trouble and NSF is one of the few organizations on Earth that could actually help get it out of trouble, and yet it’s not. It should be charting worldwide scientific policy and forcing certain kinds of climate mitigation and biosphere management, insisting on them as emergency necessities, it should be working Congress like the fucking NRA does, to get the budget it deserves, which is a much bigger budget, as big as the Pentagon’s, really those two budgets should be reversed to get them to their proper level of funding, but none of it is happening or will happen, and that is why I’m not coming back and no one in his right mind would come back either

The plane had started to descend.

Well, it would need revision. Mixed metaphors; something was either a chicken or an ostrich, even if in fact it was both. But he could work on it. He now had a draft in hand, and he would revise it and then give it to Diane Chang, head of NSF, in the slim hope that it would wake her up.

The plane turned for its final descent into Ronald Reagan Airport. Soon he would be back in the wasteland of his current life. Back in the swamp.

Back in Leo’s lab, they got busy running trials of Pierzinski’s algorithm, while continuing the ongoing experiments in “rapid hydrodynamic insertion,” as it was now called in the emerging literature. Many labs were working on the delivery problem and, crazy as it seemed, this was one of the more promising methods being investigated. A bad sign.

Thus they were so busy on both fronts that they didn’t notice at first the results that one of Marta’s collaborators was getting with Pierzinski’s method. Marta had done her Ph.D. studying the microbiology of certain algae, and she was still coauthoring papers with a postdoc named Eleanor Dufours. Leo had met Eleanor, and then read her papers, and been impressed. Now Marta had introduced Eleanor to a version of Pierzinski’s algorithm, and things were going well, Marta said. Leo thought his group might be able to learn some things from their work, so he set up a little brown-bag lunch for Eleanor to give a talk.

“What we’ve been looking into,” Eleanor said that day in her quiet steady voice, very unlike Marta’s, “is the algae in certain lichens. DNA histories are making it clear that some lichens are really ancient partnerships of algae and fungus, and we’ve been genetically altering the algae in one of the oldest, Cornicularia cornuta. It grows on trees, and works its way into the trees to a quite surprising degree. We think the lichen is helping the trees it colonizes by taking over the tree’s hormone regulation and increasing the tree’s ability to absorb lignins through the growing season.”

She talked about the possibility of changing their metabolic rates. “Lately we’ve been trying these algorithms Marta brought over, trying to find algal symbionts that speed the lichen’s ability to add lignin to the trees.”

Engineering evolution, Leo thought. His lab was trying to do similar things, of course, but he seldom thought of it that way. He needed to get this outside view to defamiliarize what he did, to see better what was going on.

“Why speed up lignin banking?” Brian wanted to know. “I mean, what use would it be?”

“We’ve been thinking it might work as a carbon sink.”

“How so?”

“Well, you know, people are talking about capturing and sequestering some of the carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere, in carbon sinks of one kind or other. But no method has looked really good yet. Stimulating plant growth has been one suggestion, but the problem is that most of the plants discussed have been very short-lived, and rotting plant life quickly releases its captured CO2 back into the atmosphere. So unless you can arrange lots of very deep peat bogs, capturing CO2 in small plants hasn’t looked very effective.”

Her listeners nodded.

“So, the thing is, living trees have had hundreds of millions of years of practice in not being eaten and outgassed by bugs. So one possibility would be to grow bigger trees. That turns out not to be so easy,” and she sketched a ground and a tree growing out of it on the whiteboard, with a red marker so that it looked like something a five-year-old would draw. “Sorry. See, most trees are already as tall as they can get, because of physical constraints like soil qualities and wind speeds. So, you can make them thicker, or”—drawing more roots under the ground line—“you can make the roots thicker. But trying to do that directly involves genetic changes that harm the trees in other ways, and anyway is usually very slow.”

“So it won’t work,” Brian said.

“Right,” she said patiently, “but many trees host these lichen, and the lichen regulate lignin production in a way that might be bumped, so the tree would quite quickly capture carbon that would remain sequestered for as long as the tree lived.

“So, given all this, what we’ve been working on is a kind of altered tree lichen. The lichen’s photosynthesis is accomplished by the algae in it, and we’ve been using this algorithm of Yann’s to find genes that can be altered to accelerate that. And now we’re getting the lichen to export the excess sugar into its host tree, down in the roots. It seems like we might be able to really accelerate the root growth and girth of the trees that these lichens grow on.”

“Capturing like how much carbon?”

“Well, we’ve calculated different scenarios, with the altered lichen being introduced into forests of different sizes, all the way up to the whole world’s temperate forest belt. That one has the amount of CO2 that would be drawn down in the billions of tons.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. And pretty quickly, too.”

“Watch out,” Brian joked, “you don’t want to be causing an ice age here.”

“True. But that would be a problem that came later. And we know how to warm things up, after all. But at this point any carbon capture would be good. There are some really bad effects coming down the pike these days, as you know.”

They all sat and stared at the mess of letters and lines and little tree drawings she had scribbled on the whiteboard.

Leo broke the silence. “Wow, Eleanor. That’s very interesting.”

“I know it doesn’t help you with your delivery problem.”

“No, but that’s okay, that isn’t what you do. This is still very interesting. It’s a different problem is all, but that happens. This is great stuff. Have you shown this to the chancellor yet?”