Whatever You Desire

Short Eco-Fiction

R. John Bambrey

Electronic edition

©2011

The booing didn't start immediately, in fact a few people had started clapping politely when the paper ended.  Then someone shouted “SELLOUT!”  The clapping faltered, but was immediately taken up by others who forced it into a slow rhythmic pulse, accompanied by the chant, “sell-out, sell-out, sell-out”, which then metamorphosed into “turn-coat, turn-coat, turn-coat”.  Things really got going when someone shouted, “you lying bastard, you made it up just to get more funding.”  I will admit that their punctuation of this slanderous claim with a chair, thrown at the speaker, did add passion if not gravitas to their argument.  It was then that she headed back stage, where I was waiting for her as agreed.  Our eyes met, she shrugged, and without further ado we crashed the bar on the fire escape and ran from the building to the sound of the fire alarm and the audience chanting, LI-AR, LI-AR, LI-AR, LI-AR.  It was completely bizarre, way beyond either of our experience bases.  We found ourselves laughing as we ran, though I still don’t really know why.  In truth I think we were touched by the sublime that day. It transcended our everyday, mundane, experience and yet was grounded in the familiar environment of a conference hall.  We were on home ground, yet there was the element of danger, that guy really meant it when he threw the chair, and when we were out of the back door we felt elation.  I guess there was also a release of tension as well, we had been apprehensive about making our results public.  Now we had done so and escaped, except, of course, there was no escape.

“ Not the best reception I've ever seen to a new set of data.” I said, once my breath had returned.

“ I don't think it was the data that they objected to, but our interpretation of it.” And she smiled at me.  Not the Prof-student kind of smile, you know condescending and belittling.  It was much warmer.  No, that doesn’t go far enough, I must be honest about what I felt that day.  At that moment the smile said to me, ‘we’re still alive (but maybe not for long), let’s go to bed!’  Yes and why shouldn't we buck the rules, she'd just told a room full of people that the world was about to end and been booed off stage for her trouble.  So why should we care about other people’s rules any more?

Back then we really didn't know how long we’d got.  The slightest tweak of any one of the various input parameters could produce massive variations in the output time frame; tomorrow or next century. The only thing we did know for certain was the inevitability of the worst case scenario.  There was, ultimately, only the worst case scenario. So we presented our results in that way and for the time scale said ‘in the near future’ to obtain maximum effect without appearing foolish when the world was still there at breakfast the following day.  I realise that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but in retrospect I can see how optimistic we were being, expecting people to accept our results without a bad reaction, but none of us had expected violence so soon.  So that was what happened the day we told a hall full of people that Mankind had pushed the environmental feedback mechanism of our planet so hard that it had finally gone out of lock.  Not only that, we also had to tell them there was no way back, at least not in sub-geological time scales.  They wouldn't believe it, they were still so sure of man's supremacy, his dominance over nature, that they would not, could not, believe it, especially when told by a woman.  A woman who had the impertinence to say, ‘I have seen the future, and mankind does not  feature too heavily in it, actually we don't feature at all.  Sorry guys but you've really screwed it up good and proper.’

Well she didn't use those exact words, but that was the gist of it.  What she did say was -

“This is a record of global temperature over the last two millennia constructed using a broad spectrum of techniques including, but not exclusively reliant upon, dendrochronology and ice core samples.  As you can see, for the first fifteen hundred years, the global temperature fluctuated no more than a fraction of a degree about a mean. However after this period we observe the beginning of an upward trend.  This develops into a constant linear increase in global temperature, persisting from about 1600 to 1800 common era, the age of scientific enlightenment.  From 1800 to the present, however, the increase becomes exponential, the age of technological and industrial expansion.  If we now overlay the data sets obtained by the application of the latest version of our Climate Iterative Translocation code we find a correspondence of better than 0.99 which gives a high level of confidence to the extrapolated data. These extrapolated data indicate the dominance of strong positive feedback mechanisms controlling the global climatic system such that either this, or this, will occur during the next few decades.”

The two sets of extrapolated data which she had shown indicated two very different planetary futures, but both lead, inevitably, to the same conclusion.  One showed an ever steeper increase in global temperature until the line was vertical on the scale displayed.  The other showed an initial increase of between three and five degrees Kelvin, allowing for errors.  This in itself would have a catastrophic effect on global agriculture, but it was followed by a vertical line downwards, a thermal discontinuity, indicating the onset of a global ice age. Both, however, ultimately predicted mean global temperatures outside the limits required for the existence of higher life forms, for example humans.  She continued speaking into the vacuum of silence.

“Both have an equal probability of occurrence, but due to the complexity and entanglement of the boundary conditions we are unable to predict, with any degree of certainty, which will occur for any particular real-world scenario.  All we can predict, with better than 0.99 confidence, is that one or the other scenario will occur sometime in the next three decades. That is to say, within the expected lifespan of most of us in this hall, the earth will become either too cold or too hot for anything other than the simplest of life-forms to survive.”

The silence persisted briefly after the reverberations of her voice had died in the hall, but it seemed an age before the nervous clapping started.

What she had added at the end of our research group seminar was,

“ So we are going to be frozen or fried because of phallocentric, testosterone fuelled greed and the perceived need to possess, deflower and defile the earth.”

There had been the same profound silence in the seminar room also.

To be honest I’m not sure which version I prefer.  The second I think, it’s more explicit and certainly has got more guts.  However you’ve got to agree that it would have been an inappropriate style to use at an open conference.

What can we do?

You're asking me what we can do?  Have you failed to understand anything I've said?  We can do nothing, that's the point!  You've got to get out of that 'fix-it with a magic bullet' mindset.  That world-view is the foundation upon which the problem stands.  Just asking that question shows fallacious, phallocentric, reductionist thinking.  If it can be broken down, it can be built back up.  No it fucking can’t!   Sorry about that, but I’ve heard that question too many times.  Look at it like this, not everything can be fixed.  Some things, once broken, stay broken.  Maybe I should say, some things once dead, stay dead, then it sounds just common sense.  Well that's the way it is with the Biosphere or Gaia or our Mother Earth, if you prefer (as I do); it’s broken - She is dead.  These expressions equate, except that the former is a sloppy way of saying it and is an inaccurate portrayal of the situation.  Worst of all, due to its grammar, it leads one to the erroneous conclusion that all things can be fixed.  All we are observing now is the unwinding of the spring - the decaying of the body.

Isn't it strange how easily even I slip into the centuries old habit of using mechanistic analogies.  Machines that can be broken, springs that unwind - it’s all this talk of divine clockwork that has condemned us and our Mother to fire or ice.  Maybe if we had known this a hundred years ago we could have done something, changed our ways, lived more lightly on the land, but I doubt it.  Anyway, now it’s much too late.  This has to have been the greatest case of denial in the history of mass psychosis.  That was why the riot started I guess. Why someone shouted liar.  It was too much for them to bear!  Of course, there were not just academics in the audience.  Had that been the case a simple character assassination would have been performed in the bar later, followed by emails expressing sadness at the professional suicide, which they had been unfortunate enough to witness, but unable to prevent.  All would have agreed that, although the loss of such a great mind was unfortunate, it would be best not to give positive reviews to any future papers or research proposals generated by her, or her group.  As it was the conference had been billed as trans-disciplinary, which basically meant that anyone could turn up, which a lot of interested and concerned people had done.  The majority of them were, more or less, connected with green and environmental activist movements and were therefore used to direct action. They were understandably upset as they had long seen our group as a beacon of light in the dark and passionless scientific world.  There were also some delegates from the energy industry who had, for a similar length of time, been keen to discredit our work.  I have long suspected one of them as the chair thrower, in which case I guess they finally, publicly, acknowledged our results as being valid.  The real problem, however, was that they all wanted to continue believing that there was a solution, admittedly for very different reasons, and that it would be discovered by a scientist.  Well why shouldn't they? Some were scientists themselves and others had an almost religious belief in the ability of scientists.  It was what the experts had been telling them for so long. They had to continue believing it, else they had nothing, worse than nothing, it negated the value system of their whole lives.  The expert knows all the answers, or at least where to find them.  When in doubt ask an expert. Our panel of experts are here today to answer all your questions and solve all your problems.  Having experts means that you no longer have to think for yourself.  Those were the mantras they had lived by, knowingly or unknowingly.  Then suddenly they found themselves faced by an expert scientist who said, ‘I don't know all the answers, for there are no answers any more.  I just know one thing.  Judgement day is upon us and we will all pay for our sins, and the sins of our fathers and there fathers before them, and we will pay with our lives!'  And in their heart of hearts they knew what that sin was; it was Greed.  Once they had received that revelation they no longer heard the words of a scientist, they heard the utterances of a mystic and mystics are never experts.  Gurus yes, experts no. (Though I've never seen much difference in them myself, nor felt the desire to follow either).  Then of course, faced with the revaluation of all values, confusion set in.  Like I said, you can’t really blame them.  In their confusion they had to find a new datum, a way to rationalise what, in their dominant paradigm, was illogical.  How could they do these mental contortions?  What if she was not an expert after all?  And if not, how could they be sure that what she said was true?  If she was not an expert (she was a woman after all) maybe she was a charlatan, but liar was an easier word to shout. Such is the chaos that attends all paradigm shifts, someone has to be ‘mad’ when two opposing, mutually exclusive, world views coexist.  At times of such unbearable tension violence has often been seen as the simplest solution, but of course, it solves nothing.

I casually used the term mystic to describe their confused view of her, but there is a truth hidden there.  Although many of the delegates at the conference would have construed 'mystic' in a derogatory sense, I would not.  Sometimes, in the inner sanctum of the university, she seemed more like a sage than a scientist and we her acolytes.  Her insight and intellectual abilities astounded and entranced us, I think every one of her research students was under her spell, in one way or another.  I am tempted to say that we all loved her, maybe I just took it a bit further than the others.  

I remember one day I had just completed the first successful compilation and execution of a new global meta-analysis routine for calculating the migratory drift of biotic habitat zones towards the poles.  (Did you know that it is in excess of a kilometre a year? That might not sound much if you’re an antelope, but it’s bad news if you are an oak tree!) Anyway, Prof had been standing behind me, leaning on the back of my chair, just watching my screen as I worked. Something which, if done by almost any other person, would be guaranteed to annoy, but not when she did it. Her presence brought a feeling of calm support and cooperation, not criticism.

“That's it,.”  she said quietly “ if we add your biological translocation code into the existing geophysical code we will have a realistic model of a single living entity, that will give us a close approximation to the ideal Lovelockian Gaia.”

It was a moment of revelation!  That afternoon was declared a holiday and the whole group went to the University Park for a picnic.  We had all been instructed, by Prof, to bring a piece of poetry with which to celebrate the breakthrough.  Then, of course, we did not know what the code would predict and still thought our work could make a difference.  Anyway, most brought something relating to the environment, some longer, some shorter, some optimistic, some not.  I couldn't tell you what half of them were, but I remember Prof’s piece clearly.

Some an army of horsemen, some an army on foot

and some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest sight

on this dark earth; but I say it is whatever you

desire.

I think it was in that moment I realised how I loved her.  Strangely, I thought not of another line of poetry, but a line from a paper I had read years before, which went something like; small changes in average conditions can generate significant changes in extremes.  I guess that it is poetry of another kind.  Although the paper had originally referred to global climatic conditions, I realised that it applied equally well to the emotional climate of the individual. The small change for me was hearing Prof recite a fragment of Sappho, which had been a favourite of mine since I had first discovered it as a confused undergrad, searching for ways to ground myself in a world where I did not seem to belong.  The extreme change was the fire of love which tore through my tinder dry existence.  There was a discontinuity in my existence, in that moment I changed.  The Macrocosm and Microcosm, if only mechanistic science had not been so swift to discard them, then we may have developed a more subtle science sooner.  

Enough of that stuff, that's just me wool-gathering.  I was telling you about the bigger picture, how we came to be where we are today.  Though I guess, when any of us are faced with a today which ultimately lacks a tomorrow, the bigger picture ceases to seem quite so important, or even be noticed at all. Yet there is a point to this story and even to relating our celebratory picnic in the park.  I changed, as I have described, but so did we all.  The collective consciousness of the whole group changed.  No one person voiced it, but all seemed to intuit it at once. We realised that there was a different way. It was there and then, at our little party in the university park, that soft science was born.  That is our history, but I fear it will be a brief one.  Even though we have made great advances in the application of the new paradigm, we cannot undo the damage of centuries in a few short decades and I assure you that is all we have left.  It is some consolation that we have experienced the paradigm shift before the end, but it is tragic (in the classical sense of the word) that it did not happen a hundred years ago.  Had this shift happened even at the beginning of this century…

But what is the sense of such speculation?  We may, or we may not, have the opportunity to welcome in the next century.  Whatever happens we might as well fill the years we have left with love.  Love for each other and love for the planet, Gaia, who has supported life for so long and would have continued to do so, had mankind not been so arrogant in his hubris.  So if we are fortunate and have the opportunity to welcome in the twenty second century, I for one intend to make it a joyful occasion.