Chapter3
"Dad, you know we'd like you to come with us, don't you?" asked Dan when they had settled into armchairs.
"Yes, son, I think I do, and I thank you. But you know that's out of the question for me. We've discussed it often enough; nothing's changed." There was an embarrassed pause. Soon Dan took up the thread of conversation again.
"How's the net working?"
“Great! Everyone's on line at all times with these," answered his father pointing to his mike- headset. "'W'e're the greatest bunch of chatterboxes you've ever heard."
"So far so good," was the reply. "We're all generating one way or another and our capacity far exceeds expected needs and all emergencies we've had. In fact there's a start-up grid up the coast that's going to join ours until their generators put out what they need. We're going to export microwave power! How long's it been since anyone's done that?"
"I dunno," came the laconic response. "We never got into that because of the hydro. But of course that's history; with the lakes and streams frozen there's no more running water so no generation. We were spoilt!"
“We all were," agreed his father. "Now it's only the wind generators that put out anything worthwhile, though you will have plenty of solar off down south, right?" His son had tuned him out and responded with a non sequitur.
"Deb said you'd be allowed to live with us in the barracks. She checked."
"Well that's great, son, but I'd be a burden to you as I became less able to take care of myself. Your family will be restricted enough as it is living in those crowded camps facing thousands of people camped like ants all over the countryside and looking for shelter and food. I couldn't face that. Only the strong will survive down there; we've seen that here already when the refugees from Norway came through. Apparently they were at each other's throats as soon as they started south.
"I sure understand what you mean, Dad. If I were on my own I would stay here too."
"Not at your age, son. You have too much vigor to face a slow death through cold and hunger."
“What about the fish? You said yourself there was a good run of salmon this fall."
"There was, indeed. But that was because we had more rain than snow this year and the river is
running fuIl. It won't last; we all know that. When the headwaters freeze, the river will dry up and the salmon will stop coming. It's just a matter of time. Remember what it was like three years ago? That was a lean time." There was a frown between the old man's eyebrows as he paused in thought.
“Dad, I hate the thought of you being unable to bring in enough wood for the stove and freezing to death in bed, or slipping on the ice and breaking a hip. And even if these things don't happen, even if a neighbor comes to help after a fall, you'll eventually starve to death." There was pain in his son's voice and the sort of quiet intensity you hear when a friend is trying to persuade an ill person to agree to some radical and dubious procedure.
"All probabilities," admitted his father with a rueful smile. '”But would I rather be trampled by a mob in an over-crowded valley where the authorities have to store the sewage in lakes because they haven't been able to build treatment plants fast enough to meet the influx of people fleeing the cold and where armed men and dogs guard electrified fences around anything containing food? I don't think so."
“But Dad, climatologists are saying the weather might get warm again like it did this year."
"Son, I've tried to explain it to you: any warming will be a temporary and maybe a local event bucking the trend. We might have mini-warming or further cooling periods in which the temperature rises or falls by a few degrees like the global warming we went through at the beginning of the century, which of course, was man-made. But the overall change is toward a cooler climate and that's what we're seeing happen. You know as well as I that it only takes a world-wide, average temperature drop of six degrees to plunge us into another ice age. That's where we're headed. The greenhouse effect stalled it for a while but it couldn't hold back the inevitable." He paused and leaned back in his chair. "A number of brave climatologists warned us some years back not to get our hopes up about warming as a permanent phenomenon. And here we are." He looked at his son with sad, resigned eyes. "We have to make the best of it, which is what we've all been doing, right?"
EDITOR'S NOTE: Chapter Four will be published: January 31, 2014
Michael James-Mined in England. There thrown on the wheel for impress of first hands.
Turned and shaped in Berkeley.
Fired and painted by students of Tamalpais district which he left in 1993.
Writes essays, stories, and poetry.
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