Overload (17 page)

true, no protest she might have made would have stayed the Nagasaki bomb

and saved the eighty thousand souls who died there or were mutilated,

merely-as many believed

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-to satisfy military and scientific curiosity. But she had not protested,

to anyone, and thus her guilt was unalloyed.

She said, thinking aloud, "They didn't need the second bomb, you know.

It was totally unnecessary. The Japanese were going to surrender because

of Hiroshima. But Fat Man was a different design from Little Boy, and

those responsible wanted to try it out, to learn if it would work. It

did."

"It's all a long time ago," Nim said. "And the question has to be asked:

Should what happened then be a factor in building nuclear plants today?"

Laura Bo said with finality, "To me the two things are inseparable."

Nim shrugged. He suspected the Sequoia Club chairman was not the only

anti-nuclcar lobbyist expiating personal or collective guilts. But true

or false, it made little difference now.

"In one way you and your people have won the nuclear battle," be

declared. "You won because you've imposed a stalemate, and you did it,

not by logic or because you bad a majority in your favor, but by legal

ruses and delay. Along that route some of the restraints you insisted on

were good; we needed them. Others are absurd. But, while it all happened,

you forced the cost of nuclear plants so high, and made the outcome of

any nuclear proposal so uncertain, that most utilities simply can't

commit themselves any more. They can't take a chance of waiting five to

ten years, spending tens of millions in preliminaries, and then being

turned down."

Nim paused, then added, "Therefore at every point in planning we need an

escape hatch, a clear alternative route to go. That's coal."

Laura Bo Carmichael picked at her salad.

"Coal and air pollution go together," she said. "Any coal-burning plant

must be sited with extreme care."

"Which is why we chose Tunipah."

"There are ecological reasons why that choice is wrong."

"Will you tell me what they are?"

"Certain species of plants and wildlife are found almost nowhere else but

in the Tunipah area. What you're proposing would endanger them."

Nim asked, "Is one of the endangered plant species the Furbish

lousewort?"

"Yes.

He sighed. Rumors about Furbish lousewort-a wild snapdragonhad already

reached GSP & L. The flower was rare and once believed extinct, but

recently new growths had been discovered, One, in Maine, had been used

by environmentalists to halt a $6oo million hydroelectric project already

;n nroarpqr

"You know, of course," Nim said, "that botanists admit the Furbish

lousewort has no ecological value and isn't even pretty."

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Laura Bo smiled. "Perhaps, for the public hearings, we'll find a botanist

who takes an opposite view. Then there's the other Tunipah inhabitant to be

considered-the Microdipodops."

Nim asked, "What in hell is that?"

"It's sometimes known as a kangaroo mouse."

"Oh, my God!" Before their meeting Nim had cautioned himself to stay cool,

but found his resolve slipping. "You'd let a mouse, or mice, prohibit a

project which will benefit millions of people?"

"I expect," Laura Bo said calmly, "those relative benefits are something

we'll be discussing in the months ahead."

"You're damn right we will! And I suppose you'll have the same kind of

objections to the Fincastle geothermal plant and Devil's Cate pumped

storage, both of which are the cleanest type of operation known to man or

nature."

"You really can't expect me, Nim, to give away all our reasons for op-

position. But I assure you we will have persuasive arguments against both."

Impetuously Nim called to a passing waiter, "Another bloody mary !11 He

motioned to Laura Bo's empty martini glass, but she shook her bead.

"Let me ask you something." Nim kept his voice controlled, annoyed at

himself for revealing his anger a moment ago. "Where would you locate any

of those plants?"

"That's really not my problem. It's yours."

"But wouldn't you-or, rather, the Sequoia Club-oppose anything we proposed,

no matter where we suggested putting it?"

Laura Bo didn't answer, though her mouth tightened.

"There's another factor I left out," Nim said. "Weather. Climate patterns

are changing worldwide, making the energy outlook-especially electrical

energy-worse. Meteorologists say we're facing twenty years of colder

weather and regional droughts. We've already seen the effect of both in the

mid-seventies."

There was a silence between them, punctuated by the restaurant sounds and

a bum of voices from other tables. Then Laura Bo Carmicbael said, "Let me

be clear about something. Exactly why did you ask me here today?"

"To appeal to you-and the Sequoia Club-to look at the big picture, and then

to moderate your opposition."

"Has it occurred to you that you and I are looking at two different big

pictures?"

"If we are, we shouldn't be," Nim said. "We're living in the same world."

He persisted, "Let me come back to where I started. If we-Golden State

Power-are blocked in everything, the result can only be catastrophic in ten

years or less. Daily blackouts, long ones, will be a norm.

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Tlat means industry dislocation and massive unemployment, maybe as high

as fifty percent. Cities will be in chaos. Few people realize how much we

live by electricity, though they will-when they're deprived of electric

power in a big way. Out in the country there'll be crop failures because

of limited irrigation, resulting in food shortages, with prices going

through the roof. I tell you, people will lack the means to live; they'll

go hungry, there will be a bigger impact on America than the Civil War.

It will make the 193os depression look like a tea party. It isn't

imagination, Laura. Not any of it. It's hard, cold fact. Don't you and

your people care?"

Nim gulped at his bloody mary, which had arrived while he was talking.

"All right," Laura Bo said; her voice was harder, less friendly than when

they started. "I've sat here through all you've had to say. Now it's my

turn, and you listen carefully." She pushed her plate away, only half of

the salad eaten.

"All your thinking, Nim, and that of others like you is near-term. En-

vironmentalists, including the Sequoia Club, are looking at the longrange

future. And what we intend to halt, by any means, is three centuries of

spoliation of this earth."

He interjected, "In some ways you've already done that."

" Nonsensel We've scarcely made a dent, and even the little we've

achieved will be undone if we let ourselves be seduced by voices of ex-

pediency. Voices like yours."

:'All that I'm pleading for is moderation."

'What you call moderation I see as a step backwards. And taking it won't

preserve a habitable world."

Nim said scornfully, not bothering to conceal his feelings any more, "How

habitable do you think the kind of world will be which I just

described-with less and less electric power?"

"It might surprise all of us by being better than you think," Laura Bo

answered calmly. "More important, we'd be moving the way civilization

should-toward less waste, less opulence, a lot less greed, and a less ma-

terialistic standard of living which would be a good thing for us all."

She paused, as if weighing her words, then continued, "We've lived so

long here with the notion that expansion is good, that bigger is better

and more is mightier, that people are brainwashed into believing it's

true. So they worship 'gross national product' and 'full employment,'

overlooking the fact that both are suffocating and poisoning us. In what

was once 'America the Beautiful' we've created an ugly, filthy concrete

wasteland, belching ashes and acids into what used to be clean air, all

the while destroying natural life-human, animal and vegetable. We've

turned sparkling rivers into stinking sewers, glorious lakes into garbage

dumps; now, along with the rest of the world, we're fouling the seas with

chemicals and oil. All of it happens a little at a time. Tlen, when

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the spoilage is pointed out, your kind of people pleads for 'moderation'

because, you say, 'This time around we won't kill many fish,' or 'We won't

poison much vegetation,' or, 'We'll only destroy a little more beauty.'

Well, some of us have seen it happen too long and too often to believe

that canard any more. So what we've done is dedicate ourselves to saving

something of what's left. Because we think there are things in this world

more important than GNP and full employment, and one of them is preserving

some cleanliness and beauty, plus holding back a share of natural

resources for generations not yet born, instead of squandering everything

here and now. And those are the reasons the Sequoia Club will fight

Tunipah, and your Devil's Gate pumped storage plant, and Fincastle

geothermal. And I'll tell you something else-I think we'll win."

"I agree with some of what you've said," Nim acknowledged. "You know I

do, because we've talked about it before. But the mistake you make is to

stomp on every opinion that's different from yours, and set yourself up

as God, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, rolled up into one. Laura, you're part

of a tiny group which knows what's best for everyone -or thinks it

does-and you're prepared to ignore practicalities and damn the rest of

us while you have your way like spoiled children. In the end you may

destroy us all."

Laura Bo Carmichael said coldly, "I don't believe we have anything more

to say to each other." She beckoned their waiter. "Please bring our

separate checks."

13

Ardytbe Talbot led the way into her living room.

"I thought you'd never call," she said. "If you hadn't, in a day or two

I was going to call you."

"We've had more trouble and I'm afraid it kept me busy," Nim told her.

"I suppose you heard about it."

It was early evening. Nim had driven to Ardythe's-as be put it to

himself, "on the way home." This afternoon, depressed by his meeting with

Laura Bo Carmichael and blaming himself for the antagonism with which it

ended, he had telephoned Ardythe on impulse. Predictably, she was warm

and friendly. "I've been feeling lonely," she confided, "and I'd love to

see you. Please come out after work and have a drink."

But when he arrived a few minutes ago it was clear that what Ar-

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dythe had in mind was more than a drink. She had greeted him with an

embrace and kiss which left no doubt of her intentions. Nim wasn't averse

to what seemed likely to follow, but for a while over drinks they settled

for conversation.

"Yes, I did hear what happened," Ardytbe said. "Has the whole world gone

mad?"

"I guess it always has been. When it's close to home you notice it more."

Today, Nim thought, Ardythe seemed greatly improved from the grim day