Sixty Days and Counting. Kim Stanley Robinson
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had to bundle up, so it was a slow process at all the security checkpoints. The audience settled onto the cold aluminum risers set on the east side of the Capitol, and Phil Chase and his entourage stepped onto the dais, tucked discreetly behind its walls of protective glass. The cold air and Phil’s happy, relaxed demeanor reminded Charlie of the Kennedy inauguration, and images of JFK and Earl Warren and Robert Frost filled his mind as he felt Joe kicking him in the back. He had only been a few years older than Joe when he had seen that one on TV. Thus the generations span the years, and now his boy was huddled against him, heavy as a rock, dragging him down but keeping him warm. ‘Dad, let’s go to the zoo! Wanna go to the zoo!’
‘Okay, Joe, but after this, okay? This is history!’
‘His story?’
Phil stood looking out at the crowd after the oath of office was administered by the Chief Justice, a man about ten years younger than he was. With a wave of his gloved hand he smiled his beautiful smile.
‘Fellow Americans,’ he said, pacing his speech to the reverb of the loudspeakers, ‘you have entrusted me with the job of president during a difficult time. The crisis we face now, of abrupt climate change and crippling damage to the biosphere, is a very dangerous one, to be sure. But we are not at war with anyone, and in fact we face a challenge that all humanity has to meet together. On this podium, Franklin Roosevelt said, “This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” Now it’s true again. We are the generation that has to deal with the profound destruction that will be caused by the global warming that has already been set in motion. The potential disruption of the natural order is so great that scientists warn of a mass extinction event. Losses on that scale would endanger all humanity, and so we cannot fail to address the threat. The lives of our children, and all their descendants, depend on us doing so.
‘So, like FDR and his generation, we have to face the great challenge of our time. We have to use our government to organize a total social response to the problem. That took courage then, and we will need courage now. In the years since we used our government to help get us out of the Great Depression, it has sometimes been fashionable to belittle the American government as some kind of foreign burden laid on us. That attitude is nothing more than an attack on American history, deliberately designed to shift power away from the American people. I want us to remember how Abraham Lincoln said it: “that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.” This is the crucial concept of American democracy – that government expresses what the majority of us would like to do as a society. It’s us. We do it to us and for us. I believe this reminder is so important that I intend to add the defining phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people” every time I use the word “government,” and I intend to do all I can to make that phrase be a true description. It will make me even more long-winded than I was before, but I am willing to pay that price, and you are going to have to pay it with me.
‘So, this winter, with your approval and support, I intend to instruct my team in the executive branch of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to initiate a series of federal actions and changes designed to meet the problem of global climate change head-on. We will deal with it as a society working together, and working with the rest of the world. It’s a global project, and so I will go to the United Nations and tell them that the United States is ready to join the international effort. We will also help the underdeveloped world to develop using clean technology, so that all the good aspects of development will not be drowned in its bad side-effects – often literally drowned. In our own country, meanwhile, we will do all it takes to shift to clean technologies as quickly as possible.’
Phil paused to survey the crowd. ‘My, it’s cold out here today! You can feel right now, right down to the bone, that what I am saying is true. We’re out in the cold, and we need to change the way we do things. And it’s not just a technological problem, having to do with our machinery alone. The devastation of the biosphere is also a result of there being too many human beings for the planet to support over the long haul. If the human population continues to increase as it has risen in the past, all progress we might make will be overwhelmed.
‘But what is very striking to observe is that everywhere on this Earth where good standards of justice prevail, the rate of reproduction is about at the replacement rate. While wherever justice, and the full array of rights as described in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, is somehow denied to some portion of the population, especially to women and children, the rate of reproduction either balloons to unsustainably rapid growth rates, or crashes outright. Now you can argue all you want about why this correlation exists, but the correlation itself is striking and undeniable. So this is one of those situations in which what we do for good in one area, helps us again in another. It is a positive feedback loop with the most profound implications. Consider: for the sake of climate stabilization, there must be population stabilization; and for there to be population stabilization, justice must prevail. Every person on the planet must live with the full array of human rights that all nations have already ascribed to when signing the U.N. Charter. When we achieve that, at that point, and at that point only, we will begin to reproduce at a sustainable rate.
‘To help that to happen, I intend to make sure that the United States joins the global justice project fully, unequivocally, and without any double standards. This means accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the jurisdiction of the World Court in the Hague. It means abiding by all the clauses of the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, which after all we have already signed. It means supporting U.N. peace-keeping forces, and supporting the general concept of the U.N. as the body through which international conflicts get resolved. It means supporting the World Health Organization in all its reproductive rights and population reduction efforts. It means supporting women’s education and women’s rights everywhere, even in cultures where men’s tyrannies are claimed to be some sort of tradition. All these commitments on our part will be crucial if we are serious about building a sustainable world. There are three legs to this effort, folks: technology, environment, and social justice. None of the three can be neglected.
‘So, some of what we do may look a little unconventional at first. And it may look more than a little threatening to those few who have been trying, in effect, to buy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and use it to line their own pockets while the world goes smash. But you know what? Those people need to change too. They’re out in the cold the same as the rest of us. So we will proceed, and hope those opposed come to see the good in it.
‘Ultimately we will be exploring all peaceful means to initiate positive changes in our systems, in order to hand on to the generations to come a world that is as beautiful and bountiful as the one we were born into. We are only the temporary stewards of a mighty trust, which includes the lives of all the future generations to come. We are responsible to our children and theirs. What we do now will reveal much about our character and our values as a people. We have to rise to the occasion, and I think we can and will. I am going to throw myself into the effort whole-heartedly and with a feeling of high excitement, as if beginning a long journey over stormy seas.’
‘Good,’ Charlie said into his phone. ‘He’s still saying the right stuff.’
‘Heck yes,’ Roy replied in his ear. ‘But you know the old saying: an ounce of law is worth a pound of rhetoric.’ Roy had made up this saying, and trotted it out as often as possible. He was seated on the opposite side of the viewing stands from Charlie and Joe, and Charlie thought he could just spot him talking into his cell phone across the way, but with all the hats and mufflers and ski masks bundling the heads of the audience, he could not be sure. Roy continued, ‘We’ll see if we can wag the dog or not. Things bog down in this town.’
‘I think the dog will wag us,’ Charlie said. ‘I think we are the dog. We’re the dog of the people, by the people and for the people.’
‘We’ll see.’ As chief of staff, Roy had already worked so hard on the transition that he had, Charlie feared, lost all sight of the big picture: ‘Everything depends on how the start goes.’
Charlie said, ‘A good start would help. But whatever happens, we have to persevere. Right, Joe?’