“There weren’t any environmental pressures that knocked off the dinosaurs,” General Hagberg said. “An asteroid did them in. We all know that. It hit off the Yucatán coast, the dinosaurs died, end of story.”
“The K-T rock—short for Cretaceous-Tertiary—was only the coup de grace,” Dr. Cardiff said, “the bullet in the head after the execution. Continentwide tectonic rift explosions—which included megavolcanoes erupting seriatim across their entire world—had plagued them since their inception for well over a hundred eighty million years. Cracking the continents apart and driving them halfway across the newly formed oceans, these endless volcanic detonations saturated the atmosphere with planet-killing pollutants and greenhouse gases, playing incomprehensible havoc with their climate.
“When the Bering Strait land bridge formed,” President Raab said, “their crisscrossing migrations spread dinosaur plague throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas.”
“In other words,” Bradford Chase said, “the dinosaurs were in an extremely weakened condition when the asteroid struck.”
“We aren’t facing anything like the dinosaurs faced,” General Hagberg said. “Sure, it’s a little warmer, but for the most part, it’s media hype.”
“Media hype?” Dr. Cardiff asked, a derisive smile forming on her lips.
“In fact, I think it’s over,” General Hagberg said. “Antarctica’s glaciers are growing, if you haven’t heard.”
“That is an example of media hype,” Dr. Cardiff said. “The most recent, most definitive South Pole study proves that Western Antarctica’s glacial melt will single-handedly elevate global sea levels over one meter by the century’s end, inundating countless oceanfront metropolises. That estimate does not factor in the deliquescence of the Greenland Ice Sheet.”
It was General Hagberg’s turn to give her a supercilious sneer.
“General Hagberg,” President Raab said irritably, “we could still be facing the asteroid’s pulse of extinction. Reets and Coop fear we could be facing the same thing, and Quetzalcoatl seems to predict that the fireball that incinerated Tula would return to raze our world.”
“I still don’t see the ‘press’ you talked about, Dr. Cardiff,” General Hagberg responded. “I don’t see that we’re in a weakened state that renders us vulnerable to extinction.”
“But we are, and we’re growing weaker at a record rate. In fact, we are undergoing the fastest mass extinction in evolutionary history.”
General Hagberg stared at her, incredulous.
“In the largest survey on record,” Dr. Cardiff said, “seventy percent of the world’s top biologists confirm that Homo sapiens is experiencing an extinction event of unprecedented rapidity. Previous mass exterminations required thousands, even millions of years to wreak their devastations. The Late Devonian Extinction, which destroyed seventy percent of all planetary species lasted fifteen to twenty million years. The Ordovician–Silurian Extinction, which was the second-largest event in evolutionary history, lasted ten million years. During the last half century, ninety percent of all large fishes have vanished, and one-third of all amphibians and one-quarter of all land mammals face eradication during the next thirty years, ninety percent of the lion population having already died off. Homo sapiens will have terminated one-half of the planet’s species by the century’s end.
“Those freshwater, marine, and terrestrial species not threatened are susceptible to climate change and will soon be in jeopardy, specifically thirty percent of the currently nonthreatened birds, fifty-one percent of nonthreatened corals, and forty-one percent of nonthreatened amphibians.”
“And you think these codices will help us stop that destruction?” the president asked.
“The environmental pressures, which undermined the magnificent Toltec civilization, are identical to those ravaging our own, particularly that of drought. The first codex also alluded to hyperviolent events that shattered the Toltecs’ world forever, and the codex suggested those catastrophes would return during our time with a vengeance. We need to know what they were and will be.”
“Dr. Cardiff,” Bradford Chase said, “the Toltecs were a nonindustrial society. How could they have produced enough greenhouse gases to affect their climate?”
“A supervolcanic detonation in the Pacific Ring of Fire did it for them, flooding the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, which eventually led to massive global warming. The droughts, which that climate shift produced, wiped out the Toltecs’ water sources.”
“Maybe in India or the Mideast,” General Hagberg said, “but the U.S. is getting by just fine.”
“Really?” Dr. Cardiff’s sneer scintillated. “Water destruction is not only a global pandemic, it is raging through the United States.”
“Look at page three of her report,” President Raab said. “United States’ water shortages combined with other environmental pressures are setting us up for the extinction’s pulse.”
General Hagberg and Brad Chase returned to her report, the section in which Dr. Cardiff described America’s water crisis:
Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s major water source, has almost run dry. Only unexpectedly heavy rains and a federal order—banning Atlanta from tapping into the lake for its water—saved Lanier from totally drying up. All of which leaves Atlanta desperate for a new water source. While Georgia fights the federal order in court and insists on its right to deplete Lanier, Florida and Alabama are battling Atlanta in court and attempting to save the lake.
Over thirty cities are currently suing each other over water rights.
Not that the rest of the South is any better at water conservation. Floridians have dried up countless lakes through uncontrolled groundwater pumping. South Carolinian courts have stopped that state’s industrial firms from releasing wastewater into rivers plagued by low water levels. In Tennessee, one city went dry and had to truck water in from Alabama.
Nor is the North immune to water shortages. Water levels in Lake Superior, which encompasses more square miles than any of the other Great Lakes, is now too low to accommodate fully laden commercial ships, forcing them to transport partial loads, driving up costs and overhead.
“Exploding populations exacerbate the problem,” President Raab said.
A yearly influx of 100,000 new residents is turning Atlanta’s water shortage into a catastrophic crisis. In the last seventeen years, California’s population has increased by over seven million people, not counting undocumented, unreported residents. During the next 40 years, the U.S. population will grow by over 120 million people—or one new resident every eleven seconds.
America’s water shortage reduces many of the alternative energies, particularly biofuels, to absurdity. To grow enough corn to produce one gallon of ethanol requires 2,500 gallons of water. Nor is the rerouting of rivers through dams, aqueducts, and irrigation a reliable solution. The U.S. is down to 60 undammed rivers, and well-pumping is drying up our aquifers.
“No wonder we’re reduced to such radical schemes as hauling Alaskan icebergs down our coasts,” President Raab said, “diverting and pumping out Canada’s rivers, piping water out of those Great Lakes that are still viable, desalinating seawater, recycling sewage, charging—even taxing—people for the water they consume, rationing water consumption.
“Read,” President Raab said.
Hagberg, Chase, and the president returned to the briefing paper.
Drought-accelerated dust storms have blanketed the Rockies with dark, heat-absorbing dirt, melting the ice- and snow-covered slopes a full month ahead of schedule, depleting late-summer water supplies. Many of these dust storms come from hundreds of miles away. Dozens of them envelop the semiarid sections of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and the Colorado high plains, more than doubling the typical quantities of dust in those regions. Colorado, which is federally mandated to supply New Mexican cities—including Santa Fe and Albuquerque—with almost 40 million gallons of water per annum, may have to renege on that obligation.
Just as many
renewable biofuels deplete U.S. water reserves, the opening of federal lands for alternative energy programs, such as solar collectors, wind turbines, and geothermal generators, along with thousands of miles of transmission lines across these water-starved regions, are exacerbating future dust storms.
Global warming is causing plants to blossom early. Insufficient water kills them, the rotted vegetation exposing the dehydrated soil, generating dust. Wind-whipped dust storms then suffocate the fragile ecosystems, destroying more plants, which hold the soil together, liberating more dust.
Moreover, as drought grows, our use of that water will become more inefficient. Irrigation squanders prodigious quantities of water, most of it drying up or seeping away unused. Farmers in the Texas high plains are already depleting U.S. aquifers, pumping groundwater faster than precipitation can replace it. Farmers in the region are draining 12 billion cubic meters of water out of the Ogallala Aquifer, which, stretching from Texas to South Dakota, is the biggest in North America, annually. So far they’ve pumped over twenty Colorado Rivers’ worth of H2O.
An arid waste, the Los Angeles basin can barely sustain a million citizens with its indigenous water sources. Stretching from Mexico to Santa Barbara—the L.A. megalopolis is already home to almost 30 million people and is growing by over 2 million per annum. Within ten years, it will swell to over 41 million . . . even as its meager water sources shrivel.
California’s population during the next decade will expand from 50 million to over 75 million. Like the L.A. megalopolis, the state’s farmers, fruit growers, factories, and cities are also watching their water supplies run dry.
“Still think the U.S. has no drought problems, General?” Bradford Chase asked.
“Not so bad as the rest of the world,” the general grumbled, returning to the briefing paper.
“You’re right about that one,” Dr. Cardiff said. “As much as forty percent of the world’s population is dependent on the Himalayas’ glacially fed rivers, and they are disappearing at record rates. When they go, Pakistan will turn into irretrievable desert, even as India and China face mass famines of an indescribable order.”
“It is only prudent to assume that wars of mass destruction will be a direct consequence of such water shortages,” Bradford Chase said.
“So many of our military-diplomatic threats emanate from the Mideast,” President Raab said. “What kind of water threats do we face there? Could you remind us again?”
“We will discuss the Mideast at the next meeting,” Dr. Cardiff said. “Very briefly, however, Turkey’s damming up of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is diverting water supplies that Iraq and Syria desperately need. They openly proclaim they will sell Manavgat River water through the region.”
“We don’t have oil, fine,” General Hagberg said. “We’ll take your water.”
“And sell it back to you,” Bradford Chase said.
“Central Asia’s Aral Sea—the fourth-largest inland sea on earth—is now a bone-dry desert, itself and its environs a toxic, arid waste,” Dr. Cardiff said. “Dwindling water supplies will in all likelihood force Yemen to evacuate its capital, Sana’a. If so, drought will have eradicated the planet’s first capital city.”
“In other words, the Mideast is going to hell in a handbasket?” President Raab asked.
“I’m saving the worst for the next meeting,” Dr. Cardiff said.
“I notice you didn’t cover Australia,” Bradford Chase said, “which has been consumed by wildfires.”
“I left it out because it’s so remote that it wasn’t a national security concern, but Australia, too, is burning up. Water supplies for its major cities are down fifty percent, even as temperatures soar. Drought now threatens sheep, cattle, dairy, and cotton production as well as electrical power. To accommodate its shrinking water supplies, Australia will have to cut its population from twenty-one million to ten million.
“Its drought-induced water shortages have irretrievably devastated over half the country, including Victoria and the entire Murray-Darling basin, turning Perth into a prospective ghost metropolis—the first of its kind in world history.”
“You described the death of Asia’s major rivers,” General Hagberg said. “Anything beyond that?”
“Asia’s central problem is part of a global pattern. Worldwide, water tables are plummeting from China to India to Pakistan to Iran throughout Africa to Mexico and the United States. Compounded by global warming, pandemic drought, desertification, record heat waves, and exploding populations, wasteful irrigation, and the massive overdrafting of global groundwater, the inexorable planetwide water shortage is reaching apocalyptic proportions.
“Over a billion people have little or no access to clean drinking water. Almost three billion people lack sufficient H2O for sanitation. Only twenty percent of the world’s population has access to clean water, while fifty percent have insufficient water to meet basic sanitation needs. Sewage contamination of their drinking water and the diarrhea-related diseases those conditions create soon turn their communities into virtual petri dishes—breeding grounds for disease and death.”
“Meanwhile,” President Raab said, “demand for clean water outstrips the planet’s ability to produce it.”
“And global warming gets worse annually,” Dr. Cardiff said, “even though it should be the other way around. The arctic is getting less and less sunlight—due to the earth’s wobbling axis—yet it is getting hotter. Arctic ice melt has elevated some oceanic regions as much as two feet this last year, and the frigid ice water has cooled, weakened, and slowed the warmwater Gulf Stream. Yet in the more than one hundred twenty years since scientists first began recording global oceanic temperatures, the seas are still the hottest on record.”
“September water temperatures off the Maine coast recently reached the high seventies,” General Hagberg grudgingly acknowledged. “I was there. I was stunned.”
“What do you conclude?” President Raab asked Dr. Cardiff.
“Homo sapiens have access to less than .08 percent of the world’s H2O, but during the next twenty years, we will require forty percent more. In ten years, the world’s farmers will require almost twenty percent more water than is available if they are to feed the world.”
“Anything else?” Bradford Chase asked.
“We still haven’t gotten into the coming supervolcano crisis,” Dr. Cardiff said, “or the real global warming threat.”
“You mean more stuff about drought?” General Hagberg asked.
“No, about the seven trillion tons of methane in the seas,” Dr. Cardiff said. “I believe global warming will soon liberate that greenhouse gas into our atmosphere.”
“And what do you want to do with it first?” General Hagberg asked. “Convert that methane into some kind of alternative energy?”
“No, those emissions have forty-five times the greenhouse gas power of CO2, and frankly, I fear all that methane will soon convert our world—not the other way around.”
“Convert our world into what?” the general asked.
“I think it will turn Mother Earth into Planet Venus,” Dr. Cardiff said. “But I will cover that scenario in my next briefing paper.”
Suddenly, the president’s beeper went off.
“Sorry,” President Raab said. “My Chief of Staff knows not to interrupt me unless it is urgent. I have to take this call.” He clicked on his BlackBerry. “Ed Raab here.” The president listened a long moment, his face grave. “Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes . . .” He abruptly hung up. “Dr. Cardiff,” President Raab said, “the Mexican police reported that they located your two former students in southern Chiapas. A small army of Apachureros bandits were assaulting them, and they called for and were attempting to escape in a federal helicopter. One of the women was spotted hanging from a landing strut, from which she fell over a hundred fifty feet into a white-water cataract leading to a chain of three precipitous waterfalls. She is presumed dead. The chopper was hit by a rocket grenade. In flames and bill
owing black smoke, it was last seen limping off over a remote section of rain forest. The federales are attempting to locate another chopper to mount a search, but it doesn’t look promising. It might take another day or two to borrow one and haul it in from the nearest military base. I’m sorry, Monica. I know how much those girls mean to you.”
Dr. Cardiff said nothing. After picking the papers and notes up from the conference table, she put them back in her attaché case. She got up from the table and left the room without looking back or saying good-bye.
She needed a drink.
45
GLOBAL SECURITY PROJECT BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Monica Cardiff finished her rocks glass of Hennessy brandy and stared into the television screen of her Georgetown apartment. As she watched Los Angeles blaze, she tried to take her mind off the almost certain demise of Reets, Cooper Jones, and their two friends. Staring absently at the burning city, she reached again for the heavy beveled glass and poured herself another two inches of Hennessy. She’d never liked L.A. much—in part because she’d been forced to live there for two long months while consulting on a global-warming disaster documentary based on one of her books. She’d found both the people and the film industry money-crazed, sex-obsessed, work-averse, and cerebrally superficial.
Still, she had not wanted L.A. to die like this.
Christ, the wildfires were now roaring down from the Mulholland Hills into the outskirts of Beverly Hills. The same was happening throughout much of the city. Hot torrential winds were sweeping the brushfires in the scrub hills surrounding Los Angeles down into the L.A. basin.
No, this was much more than the death of L.A. Cardiff feared she witnessed not simply a city in flames but the earth itself ablaze.