Read State Of Fear Page 61

Page 61

 

  The reality is, they run from the storms.

  "What do we do now?"

  "Ill tell you what we do," Morton said. "You work for me. Im starting a new environmental organization. I have to think of a name. I dont want one of these pretentious names with the words world and resource and defense and wildlife and fund and preservation and wilderness in them. You can string those words together in any combination. World Wildlife Preservation Fund. Wilderness Resource Defense Fund. Fund for the Defense of World Resources. Anyway, those fake names are all taken. I need something plain and new. Something honest. I was thinking of Study the Problem And Fix It. Except the acronym doesnt work. But maybe thats a plus. We will have scientists and field researchers and economists and engineersand one lawyer. "

  "What would this organization do?"

  "There is so much to do! For example: Nobody knows how to manage wilderness. We would set aside a wide variety of wilderness tracts and run them under different management strategies. Then wed ask outside teams to assess how we are doing, and modify the strategies. And then do it again. A true iterative process, externally assessed. Nobodys ever done that. And in the end well have a body of knowledge about how to manage different terrains. Not preserve them. You cant preserve them. Theyre going to change all the time, no matter what. But you could manage themif you knew how to do it. Which nobody does. Thats one big area. Management of complex environmental systems. "

  "Okay amp;"

  "Then wed do developing-world problems. The biggest cause of environmental destruction is poverty. Starving people cant worry about pollution. They worry about food. Half a billion people are starving in the world right now. More than half a billion without clean water. We need to design delivery systems that really work, test them, have them verified by outsiders, and once we know they work, replicate them. "

  "It sounds difficult. "

  "Its difficult if you are a government agency or an ideologue. But if you just want to study the problem and fix it, you can. And this would be entirely private. Private funding, private land. No bureaucrats. Administration is five percent of staff and resources. Everybody is out working. Wed run environmental research as a business. And cut the crap. "

  "Why hasnt somebody done it?"

  "Are you kidding? Because its radical. Face the facts, all these environmental organizations are thirty, forty, fifty years old. They have big buildings, big obligations, big staffs. They may trade on their youthful dreams, but the truth is, theyre now part of the establishment. And the establishment works to preserve the status quo. It just does. "

  "Okay. What else?"

  "Technology assessment. Third world countries can leapfrog. They skip telephone lines and go right to cellular. But nobody is doing decent technology assessment in terms of what works and how to balance the inevitable drawbacks. Wind powers great, unless youre a bird. Those things are giant bird guillotines. Maybe we should build them anyway. But people dont know how to think about this stuff. They just posture and pontificate. Nobody tests. Nobody does field research. Nobody dares to solve the problemsbecause the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world. "

  "Really?"

  "Trust me. When youre my age, youll know it is true. Next, how about recreational land usemultipurpose land use. Its a rats nest. Nobody has figured out how to do it, and its so hot, so fierce that good people just give up and quit, or vanish in a blizzard of lawsuits. But that doesnt help. The answer probably lies in a range of solutions. It may be necessary to designate certain areas for one or another use. But everybody lives on the same planet. Some people like opera, some people like Vegas. And theres a lot of people that like Vegas. "

  "Anything else?"

  "Yes. We need a new mechanism to fund research. Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done. And if they are smart, theyll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends. All thats got to change. "

  "How?"

  "I have some ideas. Make scientists blind to their funding. Make assessment of research blind. We can have major policy-oriented research carried out by multiple teams doing the same work. Why not, if its really important? Well push to change how journals report research. Publish the article and the peer reviews in the same issue. Thatll clean up everybodys act real fast. Get the journals out of politics. Their editors openly take sides on certain issues. Bad dogs. "

  Evans said, "Anything else?"

  "New labels. If you read some authors who say, We find that anthropogenic greenhouse gases and sulphates have had a detectable influence on sea-level pressure it sounds like they went into the world and measured something. Actually, they just ran a simulation. They talk as if simulations were real-world data. Theyre not. Thats a problem that has to be fixed. I favor a stamp: WARNING: COMPUTER SIMULATIONMAY BE ERRONEOUS and UNVERIFIABLE. Like on cigarettes. Put the same stamp on newspaper articles, and in the corner of newscasts. WARNING: SPECULATIONMAY BE FACT-FREE. Can you see that peppered all over the front pages?"

  "Anything else?" Evans was smiling now.

  "There are a few more things," Morton said, "but those are the major points. Its going to be very difficult. Its going to be uphill all the way. Well be opposed, sabotaged, denigrated. Well be called terrible names. The establishment will not like it. Newspapers will sneer. But, eventually, money will start to flow to us because well show results. And then everybody will shut up. And then we will get lionized, which is the most dangerous time of all. "

  "And?"

  "By then, Im long dead. You and Sarah will have run the organization for twenty years. And your final job will be to disband it, before it becomes another tired old environmental organization spouting outmoded wisdom, wasting resources, and doing more harm than good. "

  "I see," Evans said. "And when its disbanded?"

  "Youll find a bright young person and try to excite him or her to do what really needs to be done in the next generation. "

  Evans looked at Sarah.

  She shrugged. "Unless you have a better idea," she said.

  Half an hour before they reached the California coast, they saw the spreading brown haze hanging over the ocean. It grew thicker and darker as they approached land. Soon they saw the lights of the city, stretching away for miles. It was blurred by the atmosphere above.

  "It looks a bit like hell, doesnt it," Sarah said. "Hard to think were going to land in that. "

  "We have a lot of work to do," Morton said.

  The plane descended smoothly toward Los Angeles.

 

 
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