Overload

" What I’d like you to consider, Laura, is not just Golden State Power & Light, or the Sequoia Club, or even the environment, but a whole wider spectrum. You could call it ‘basic civilized values,’ or ‘the life we lead,’ or maybe-more accurately-‘minimum expectations."’

"Actually, I think about those things a good deal."

"Most of us do, but lately not enough-or realistically. Because everything under all those headings is in peril. Not just in part, not a few bits and pieces of life as we know it, but everything. Our entire system is in danger of coming apart, of breaking up."

"That isn’t a new argument, Nim. I usually hear it in conjunction with a line like, ‘If this particular application-to build a polluting this or that, exactly where and how we want it-is not approved by tomorrow at the latest, then disaster will be swift and sure."’

Nim shook his head. "You’re playing dialectics with me, Laura. Sure, what you just said is stated or implied sometimes; at Golden State we’ve been guilty of it ourselves. But what I’m speaking of now is overall-and not posturing, but reality."

Their waiter reappeared and presented two ornate menus with a flourish.

Laura Bo ignored hers. "An avocado and grapefruit salad with a glass of skim milk."

Nim banded back his own menu. "I’ll have the same."

The waiter went away looking disappointed.

"What seems impossible for more than a handful of people to grasp," Nim continued, "is the total effect when you add together all the resource changes and calamities-natural plus political-which have happened, virtually at once."

"I follow the news, too." Laura Bo smiled. "Could it be I’ve missed something?"

"Probably not. But have you done the addition?"

"I think so. But give me your version."

"Okay. Number one, North America is almost out of natural gas. All that remains is seven or eight years’ supply, and even if new gas reserves arc found, the best we can hope for is to serve existing users. No new customers can be taken on-now or later. So for large-scale, unlimited use we’re at the end of the line, except for gasification of our coal reserves, and stupidity in Washington has slowed that to a walk. Do you agree?"

"Of course. And the reason we’re running out of natural gas is because the big utility companies-yours and others-put profits ahead of conservation and squandered a resource which could have lasted half a century more."

Nim grimaced. "We responded to public demand, but never mind. I’m talking hard facts, and how all that natural gas got used is history. It can’t be undone." On his fingers he ticked off a second point. "Now, oil. There are still big supplies untapped, but the way oil is being guzzled, the world could be scraping the bottom of its wells by the turn of the century-which isn’t far away. Coupled with that, all industrialized free world nations are dependent more and more on imported oil, which leaves us open, any damn day the Arabs want to kick us in the ass again, to political and economic blackmail."

He stopped, then added, "Of course, we should be liquefying coal, just as the Germans did in World War II. But the politicians in Washington can get more votes by holding televised hearings where they vilify the oil companies."

"You have a certain glib persuasiveness, Nim. Have you ever thought of running for office?"

"Should I try at the Sequoia Club?"

"Perhaps not."

"All right," he said, "so much for natural gas and oil. Next, consider nuclear power."

"Must we?"

He stopped, regarding her curiously. At the mention of "nuclear," Laura Bo’s face had tightened. It always did. In California and elsewhere she was an impassioned foe of nuclear power plants, her opinions listened to respectfully because of her association with the World War II Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs.

Nim said, without looking at her, "That word is still like a dagger in the heart to you, isn’t it?"

Their lunch had arrived, and she paused until the waiter had gone before replying.

"I imagine you know by now that I still see the mushroom cloud."

"Yes," he said gently. "I know, and I think I understand."

"I doubt that, you were so young, you don’t remember. You weren’t involved, as I was."

Though her words were controlled, the agony of years still seethed beneath them. Laura Bo had been a young scientist who came to the atomic bomb project in the last six months before Hiroshima. At the time she had wanted desperately to be a part of history, but after the first bomb-code name: Little Boy-had been dropped, she was horrified and sickened. What gave her greatest guilt, however, was that she had not protested, after Hiroshima, the dropping of the second bomb-code name: Fat Man-on Nagasaki. True, there had been only three days between the two. Equally 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-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-nuclear lobbyist expiating personal or collective guilt. But true or false, it made little difference now.

"In one way you and your people have won the nuclear battle," he declared. "You won because you’ve imposed a stalemate, and you did it, not by logic or because you had 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 anymore. 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 snapdragon had 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.

"You know, of course," Nim said, "that botanists admit the Furbish lousewort has no ecological value and isn’t even pretty."

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