It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise they’re wrecking their own kids’ lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I don’t think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off.

The second book in the series, Fifty Degrees Below, arrives in October, 2005.

See Also

• Zone SF interview on The Years of Rice and Salt
• Tim O’Reilly’s appreciation of Kim Stanley Robinson

The authors envision a state designed to protect the “integrity” of the home — autonomous family units composed exclusively of one woman, one man, and as many children as possible. As incentive for the mother to stay home and fulfill her “aptness for motherhood,” fathers would be paid a “family wage.” “Home economies” would replace the “control of big government and vast corporations,” whose demands have eroded the sovereignty of marriage-based families. The tax code would be amended to favor large families and small businesses.

So Canute, how’s that eliminating the tides by sovereign fiat working out for you?

The lack of vision, imagination, and creativity by the Christian Right leaves me amazed. They think they’ll deal with outsourcing by creating Purdah-lite, and handing out baby subsidies? The rest of the world will treat you as damage, and you remember the rest of that line.

Laugh at these people. They may have the ear of the President, but they’re still fools.

Other folks engage the problems, and have fun. “The Natural Family Manifesto” crowd have no Kung Fu.

Now you’d think that a guy who does that would end up, at best, being a colorful crank. But Francis didn’t. He applied to graduate school, in Montana.

It took him two years to walk there, but he finished a masters and a PhD (on how to respond to oil spills.)

He also ended up walking across America. His advice: carry and play a banjo when you travel.

Then, being that he’s an expert on oil spills, he was hired by the Coast Guard to help them figure out how to clean up after them.

Francis now speaks, and uses cars, trains, planes, and buses again.

I’m waiting for the paper on ‘branes and hell dimensions.

It’s a major source of CO₂, coal dust and smoke is a health hazard, and most of its use is subsidized.

It’s nasty business, but those deer share the same ecosystem as thousands of dairy cattle, who provide a livelihood for farmers in the region, and if CWD jumps species, it’d be even more of a economic disaster.

My friend Juliebata says that her family plans to sit out bow and rifle season this fall, because they aren’t certain of the safety of the venison they would harvest. They aren’t the only ones. The State predicts that the normal throngs of rifle season hunters from in-state and out-state will stay home instead of spending the Thanksgiving weekend in their blinds.

California’s deer herds don’t have this problem. Of course, deer that’s been grazing on Farmer John’s corn all summer taste better than one that’s been subsisting on scrub and grasses.

Emissions trading seems straightforward in practice, but, considering that you and I dump carbon into the atmosphere as well as Reliant Energy, how do I pay for my pollution rights? Does Honda buy enough to cover what my Civic will produce over it’s operating life, and add the present discounted value to the sticker price? And what if I add an after market device to reduce emissions, or have the car converted to hydrogen or natural gas? How do I sell my rights to the forgone carbon?

The Atlantic’s website has a series of animations from the simulations described in the article. [ QuickTime ]

(((Now there’s a curiosity for you, ladies and gentlemen: it’s a Mujihadeen-Related Wexelblat Disaster. And it’s rather unlikely to be the last. Imagine trying to flee an American flood or hurricane under conditions of tight security lockdown. What if those facial-recognition units fritz out down at the bus station?)))

The spectrum of Wexelblat Disasters is as varied as industrialization itself. It’s not the lightning that electrocutes you, it’s the wires it knocks down. It’s not the heavy soggy topsoil that gets you, it’s the fireball from the ruptured underground gasoline tank. It’s not the floods that get you, or even the floods levitating the house off its foundation, it’s the natural gas leak when the pipes break.