Nim was to be the exception.
His assistant, the chairman had made clear, would continue to be GSP & L’s policy spokesman, Nim’s public appearances, if anything, increasing. It put him, Nim thought wryly, squarely on the firing line. Or, more precisely, the bombing line.
The chairman had also, quietly, increased Nim’s salary. Hazardous duty pay, Nim thought, even though the raise was overdue.
“Although Fraser was our president,” he explained to Laura Bo, “he was not the chief executive officer and, in some ways, wasn’t in the mainstream of command. He was also five months from retirement.”
“That makes it even sadder. How about the others?”
“One of the injured died this morning. A woman secretary.” Nim had known her slightly. She was in the treasurer’s department and had authority to open all mail, even that marked “private and confidential.” The privilege had cost her her life and saved that of her boss, Sharlett Underhill, to whom the booby-trapped envelope was addressed. Two of the five bombs which exploded had injured several people who were nearby; an eighteen-year-old billing clerk had lost both hands.
A waiter brought their drinks and Laura Bo instructed him, “These are to be on separate checks. And the lunch.”
“Don’t worry,” Nim said, amused. “I won’t suborn you with my company expense account.”
“You couldn’t if you tried. However, on principle I won’t take anything from someone who might want to influence the Sequoia Club.”
“Any influencing I try will be out in the open. I simply thought that over a meal was a good way to talk.”
“I’ll listen to you anytime, Nim, and I’m happy to have lunch. But I’ll still pay for my own.”
They had first met, years before, when Nim was a senior at Stanford and Laura Bo was a visiting lecturer. She had been impressed by his penetrating questions, he by her willingness to address them frankly. They had kept in touch and, even though they were adversaries at times, respected each other and stayed friends.
Nim sipped his bloody mary. “It’s about Tunipah mostly. But also our plans for Devil’s Gate and Fincastle.”
“I rather thought it would be. It might save time if I told you the Sequoia Club intends to oppose them all.”
Nim nodded. The statement did not surprise him. He thought for a moment, then chose his words carefully.
“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 handed 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 running out of natural gas. Oh, there’ll be some temporary surpluses for a while, and we’ll have inflows from Canada, and maybe Mexico, to ease our own depletion over the next ten years. But 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, 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.”
&n
bsp; Nim shrugged. He suspected the Sequoia Club chairwoman was not the only anti-nuclear lobbyist expiating personal or collective guilts. But true or false, it made little difference now.
“There is also,” Laura Bo added, “the matter of the accident at Three Mile Island. I trust you are not forgetting that.”
“No,” Nim said, “no one will forget it—on our side as well as yours. But I’d remind you that disaster was averted there, that there have been corrections, and the lessons learned have been applied to other nuclear plants.”
“That, of course, is the soporific line we were fed before Three Mile Island happened.”
Nim sighed. “It’s true. No reasonable person can deny it.” He went on, “But even without Three Mile Island, you and your people had already won the nuclear battle. You won because, while you were protesting, and using legal ruses to delay development and operating experience, you forced the cost of nuclear plants so high, and made the outcome of any nuclear proposal so indefinite, 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 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 $600 million hydroelectric project already in progress.
“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 Gate 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.”
Impetuously Nim called to a passing waiter, “Another bloody mary!” He motioned to Laura Bo’s empty martini glass, but she shook her head.
“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 hum of voices from other tables. Then Laura Bo Carmichael 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. That 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 1930s 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. Environmentalists, including the Sequoia Club, are looking at the long-range 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.”
“Nonsense! 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 expediency. Voices like yours.”
“All that I’m pleading for is moderation.”
“What you call moderation I see as a step backward. 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 materialistic 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. Then, when 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, ‘Well only destroy a little more beauty.’ Well, some of us have seen it happen too long and too often to believe that canard any mor
e. 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
Ardythe 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 he 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.”