Sixty Days and Counting

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “Yeah. We can. It would be cool if the president would back the forest and wilderness initiatives coming out of the animal rights community. Brother to Wolves kind of thing, you know.”

  Charlie laughed. “He’s got a lot on his plate. I don’t know if he’s got time for that one right now. It’s a hard thing to get his attention these days.”

  For Frank this was a new issue, but Charlie had been dealing with it for years, since long before Phil had become president. It simply was not easy to get any time with someone so powerful and busy. Now Charlie could see that Frank also was running into that limitation. Even though Diane was the presidential science advisor, ensconced in the Old Executive Offices and therefore able to walk over whenever called on to discuss things with the president and his people, she still did not see him very often. He was booked by the minute. No matter how sympathetic Andrea and Roy were to the scientists’ cause, there was very little presidential time available to give to meetings with them. On they had to go, flying in formation, and the days ripped away as in the calendar shots of old movies.

  But then one afternoon, after Frank had given Charlie a call to beg for some intercession on the nuclear regulations issue, and Charlie had passed the word along in a call to Roy, he got a call back from that so-busy man.

  It was right before dinner time. “The boss is ready to call it a day, but he wants to talk to your people about this regulation relief. So he’s proposed one of his little expeditions over to the Tidal Basin. We take some takeout to the blue pedal boats, and have a picnic on the water.”

  “Oh good,” Charlie said. “I’ll call Frank and we’ll meet you down there.”

  “Not me, I’ve got stuff to do. Andrea will be going though.”

  Charlie called Frank and described the plan.

  “Good idea,” Frank said.

  The president would be driven over by his Secret Service detail, and as normal hours of operation for the tourist concession there were done for the day, it would be easy to take over the dock and the tidal pool, and unobtrusively to secure the perimeter. The National Park Service was fine with it; indeed, it was already a little presidential tradition, and from their perspective, being political support from the highest position in government, a good thing. Even the most virulent anti-Chase media had not been able to make much hay out of these expeditions—not that they hadn’t tried, but Phil’s laughing ripostes had made them look like prigs and fools, and they had mostly given up on that front.

  The time being what it was, Charlie decided to take Joe along. He went down to daycare and found him occupied in some game or other with a girl his age, but he was happy enough to join the Secret Service detail in one of their lightly armored black Priuses.

  After they parked on 15th Street and got out and walked down to the pedal-boat dock, where Phil and Andrea and some of the Secret Service guys were already standing, Charlie followed Joe a short way up the basin’s shore path, agreeing that some rocks to throw in the water would be just the thing. Then Joe found some pea gravel and discovered that throwing it in the water by the handful was just as good as throwing bigger rocks.

  Looking north at the Mall Charlie saw Diane, Frank, Kenzo, and Edgardo walking down 17th Street. By coming directly across the Mall, they had almost beaten the car caravan. They were a good-looking group, Charlie thought. Edgardo was gesturing in the midst of some comic soliloquy, making the rest laugh. Frank and Diane walked a bit behind, in step, heads together. As they crossed Independence Avenue at the light, Diane slipped her arm under Frank’s, and as they reached the curb he helped her up with what almost looked like a little slap to the bottom. They too were laughing. A couple out on a balmy autumn evening.

  They came down to the Tidal Basin on the pedestrian path, and Charlie and Joe joined them on the way to the dock. Some National Park rangers were untying a clutch of the blue pedal boats. The little round lake was empty, the round-topped Jefferson Memorial reflected upside-down in it, the FDR Memorial invisible in a knot of trees on the opposite bank. The late light burnished things. On the dock Charlie saw in the rangers and everyone else that look of contained excitement that surrounded the presidency at all times. This party would make for a story afterward, people’s faces said. Another Phil Chase moment to add to all the rest.

  Phil was expert in ignoring all that, crying out hellos to rangers he had seen before, making it clear he was a regular. His security people were forming a scarcely visible human barrier, intercepting tourists approaching to rubber-neck at the scene, establishing an invisible boundary. Joe rushed to the boats lined up and ready against the dock, attempting to get in the first one, but Charlie caught him just in time by the arm. “Wait a second, big guy, you have to have a lifejacket on. You know that, you’re so funny,” feeling all the while pleased to see this flash of the old enthusiasm.

  “Hey Joe!” Phil exclaimed. “Good to see you buddy, come on, let’s be the first ones out! I think I see Pedal Boat One right here in front,” stepping down into it.

  He reached out for Joe, which meant that Charlie was going to have to join him, and so Charlie took a kid’s life preserver from the ranger offering it and tried to get one of Joe’s arms through it. A quick wrestling move, similar to the one honed by long practice with baby backpack insertions, got him started, but then Charlie looked up to see that Frank had taken Diane by the upper arm and slipped through the group to the edge of the dock. “Here,” Frank said, ushering Diane into Phil’s boat, “I’ve got to be the one who goes out with Joe, I promised him the last time I took out Nick, so I need to go out with them. So here, Diane, you go with the president this time, you guys need to talk anyway.” She looked surprised.

  “Good idea!” Phil said, reaching out to help her step into the boat. He smiled his famous smile. “Let’s get a head start on them.”

  “Okay,” Diane said as she sat down. Frank turned away from them to greet Joe and lead Charlie to another boat.

  Phil and Diane pedaled away from the dock. Charlie and Frank got in the next one, held in place by rangers with boathooks, and they took Joe and strapped him in between them. By the time they were ready to go some time had passed; Phil and Diane were already midpond, chomping away like a little steamboat across the coppery water. Frank waved to them, but they did not see; they were laughing at something, their attention already otherwise engaged.

  P C: Morning Charlie. Have some coffee. Joe, do you want coffee?

  JQ: Sure Phil.

  CQ: How about hot chocolate.

  PC: Oh yeah, that’s what I’m having.

  JQ: Sure.

  PC: Rain on our dawn patrol. Too bad. Although rain has gotten a lot more interesting than it used to be, hasn’t it?

  CQ: Droughts will do that.

  PC: Yes. But now is the winter of our wet content. Here you go, Joe. Here you go, Charlie. These south windows are big, aren’t they. I like looking at rain out the window. Here Joe, you can put those right here on the carpet. Good.

  (Pause. Slurping.)

  PC: So, Charlie, I’ve been thinking that we can’t afford to bog down like we kind of are. We have to go fast, so maybe we can’t afford to fight capital anymore. They’ve rigged the numbers and written the laws.

  CQ: So, let me guess, now you want to make saving the world a capitalist project? You make it some kind of canny investment opportunity, with a great six-month rate of return?

  PC: This is why you are one of my trusted advisors, Charlie. You can guess what I’m thinking right after I say it.

  JQ: Ha Dad.

  CQ: Ha yourself.

  PC: So yes, that’s what you do. Without conceding that private ownership of the public trust is right, or even sensible, but only because it has bought up so much of the next thirty years. Heck it supposedly owns the world in perpetuity. We’ll change that later. Right now we have to harness it to our cause, and use it to solve our problem. If we can do that, then the capitalism we end up with won’t be the same one we began with anyway. The
rescue operation is so much larger than anything else we’ve ever done that it will change everything.

  CQ: Or so you hope!

  PC: It’s what I’m going to try. I think we are more or less forced to try it that way. I don’t see any alternative. Really, if we don’t get the infrastructure and transport systems swapped out as fast as is physically possible, the world is cooked. It’s like our first sixty days never ended, but only keeps rolling over. It’s like sixty days and counting all the time. So we have to look to what we have now. And right now we have capitalism. So we have to use it.

  CQ: I don’t see how.

  PC: For one thing, capital has a lot of capital. And a lot of it they keep liquid and available for investment. It runs into trillions of dollars. They want to invest it. At the same time there’s an overproduction problem. They can make more than they can sell of lots of things. And so all capital of all kinds is on the hunt for a good investment, some thing or a service that isn’t already overproduced. Looking to maximize profit, which is the goal that all business executives are legally bound to pursue, or they can be fired and sued by their board of directors.

  CQ: Yeah, but crisis recovery isn’t profitable, so what’s your point?

  PC: My point is there’s an immense amount of capital, looking to invest in new production! Because capital accumulation really works, at least at first, but it works so well it fulfills every necessity for a target population, and then every desire, and so it stops growing so fast, and without maximum growth you can’t get maximum profits. So you need to find new markets. And so, this has been what has been going on for the last few hundred years, capital moving from product to product but also from place to place, and what we’ve got now as a result is hugely uneven development. Some places were developed centuries ago, and some of those have since been abandoned, as in the rust belts. Some places are newly developed and cranking, others are being developed and are in transition. And then there are places that have never been developed, even if their resources were extracted, and they’re pretty much still in the Middle Ages. And this is what globalization has been so far—capital moving on to new zones of maximized return. Some national government will be willing to waive taxes, or pay for the start-up costs, and certainly to give away land. And there’s usually also a very willing labor force—not completely destitute or uneducated, but, you know—hungry. So capital comes in and that feeds more investment because there are synergies that help everyone. And so the take-off region develops like crazy, growth is in double digits for like a generation or so. China is doing that now, that’s what’s killing them. And so pretty soon the new area gets fully developed too! People have their basic needs, and they’ve created local capital that competes for profits. Now they’re another labor force with raised expectations. The profit margin therefore goes down. It’s time to move on, baby! So they look around to see where they might alight next, and then they take off and leave.

  CQ: The World Bank, in other words. That’s what I told them. I lost my mind. I took off my shoe and beat on their table.

  PC: That’s right, that meeting was reported to me, and I wish I had been there to see it. First you laugh in the president’s face, and then you scream at the World Bank in a fury. That was probably backwards, but never mind. I’m glad you did it. I think the decapitation is going rather well over there. The midlevel was stuffed with idealistic young people who went there to change it from within, and now they’re getting the chance.

  CQ: I hope you don’t tape these conversations.

  PC: Why not? It makes it a lot easier to put them in my blog.

  CQ: Come on, Phil. Do you want me to talk or not?

  PC: You can be the judge of that, but right now I am enjoying laying out for us the latest from geographic economics. The theory of uneven development, have you read these guys?

  CQ: No.

  PC: You should. As they describe, capital finds a likely place to develop next, and boom off they go, see? Place to place. The people left behind either adjust to being on their own, or fall into a recession, or even fall into a full-on rust-belt collapse. Whatever happens to them, global investment capital will no longer be interested. That’s the point at which you begin to see people theorizing bioregionalism, as they figure out what the local region can provide on its own. They’re making a virtue out of necessity, because they’ve been developed and are no longer the best profit. And somewhere else the process has started all over.

  CQ: So soon the whole planet will be developed and modernized and we’ll all be happy! Except for the fact that it would take eight Earths to support every human living at modern levels of consumption! So we’re screwed!

  JQ: Dad.

  PC: No, that’s right. That’s what we’re seeing. The climate change and environmental collapse are the start of us hitting the limits. We’re in the process of overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet, or the consumption level, or what have you.

  CQ: Yes.

  PC: And yet capitalism continues to vampire its way around the globe, determined to remain unaware of the problem it’s creating. Individuals in the system notice, but the system itself doesn’t notice. And some people are fighting to keep the system from noticing, God knows why. It’s a living I guess. So the system cries: It’s not me! As if it could be anything else, given that human beings are doing it, and capitalism is the way human beings now organize themselves. But that’s what the system claims anyway, It’s not me, I’m the cure! and on it goes, and pretty soon we’re left with a devastated world.

  CQ: I’m wondering where you’re taking this. So far it’s not sounding that good.

  PC: Well, think about both parts of what I’ve been saying. The biosphere is endangered and so are humans. Meanwhile capitalism needs undeveloped regions that are ripe for investment. So—saving the environment IS the next undeveloped country! It’s sustainability that works as the next big investment opportunity! It’s massive, it’s hungry for growth, people want it. People need it.

  CQ: The coral reefs need it. People don’t care.

  PC: No, people care. People want it, of course they do. And capital always likes a desire it can make into a market. Heck, it will make up desires from scratch if it needs to, so real ones are welcome. So it’s a good correlation, a perfect fit of problem and solution. A marriage made in heaven.

  CQ: Phil please, don’t be perverse. You’re saying the problem is the solution, it’s doubletalk. If it were true, why isn’t it happening already then?

  PC: It isn’t the easiest money yet. Capital always picks the low-hanging fruit first, as being the best rate of return at that moment. Maximum profit is usually found in the path of least resistance. And right now there are still lots of hungry undeveloped places. And we haven’t yet run out of fossil carbon to burn. Heck, you know the reasons—it would be a bit more expensive to do the start-up work on this country called sustainability, so the profit margin is low at first, and since only the next quarter matters to the system, it doesn’t get done.

  CQ: Right, and so?

  PC: So that’s where government of the people, by the people, and for the people comes into the picture! And we in the United States have the biggest and richest and most powerful government of the people, by the people, and for the people in the whole world! It’s a great accomplishment for democracy, often unnoticed—we have to call people’s attention to that, Charlie. We the people have got a whole lot of the world’s capital sloshing around, owned by us. The GOVERNMENT is the COMMONS. Heck, we’re so big we can PRINT MONEY! It took Keynes to teach the economists how that power could be put to use, but really governments of the people, by the people, and for the people have known what this means all along. It’s the power to do things. So, we the people can aim capitalism in any direction we want, first by setting the rules for its operation, and second by leading the way with our own capital into new areas, thus creating the newest regions of maximum profitability. So the upshot is, if we can get Congress to comm
it federal capital first, and also to erect certain strategic little barriers to impede the natural flow of capital to the path of least resistance but maximum destruction, then we might be able to change the whole watershed.

  CQ: How many metaphors are you going to mix into this stew?

  PC: They are all part of a heroic simile, obviously, having to do with landscape and gravity. A very heroic simile, if I may say so.

  JQ: Heroic!

  PC: That’s right Joe. You are a good kid. You are a patriotic American toddler. So Charlie, can you write me some speeches putting this into inspiring and politically correct terminology?

  CQ: Why do you have to be politically correct anymore? You’re the president!

  PC: So I am. More coffee? More hot chocolate?

  O NE DAY AN E-MAIL CAME FROM LEO Mulhouse, out in San Diego, forwarding a review paper about nonviral insertion. The RRCCES lab had gotten some really good results in introducing an altered DNA sequence into mice using three- and four-metal nanorods. In essence, Frank judged, the long-awaited targeted delivery system was at hand.

  He stared at the paper. There were a bunch of other reasons piling up to go out to San Diego again. And San Diego was only one of several places he wanted to visit in person, or was being asked to visit. Taken together they implied much more travel than he had time to accomplish; he didn’t know exactly what to do, and so went nowhere, and the problem got worse. It wasn’t quite like his indecision fugue state; it was just a problem. But it was Diane who suggested that he string all the trips together in a quick jaunt around the world, dropping in on Beijing, the Takla Makan, Siberia, and England. He could start with San Diego, and the White House travel office could package it so it would only take him a couple of weeks at the most. A meeting, two conferences, and three on-site inspections.

  So he agreed, and then the day of his departure was upon him, and he had to dig out his passport and get his visas and other documents from the travel office, and put together a travel bag and jump on the White House shuttle out to Dulles.