The Deluge

by Stephen Markley

Kate Morris These are acceptable trade-offs in a tactical war. We’ve been clear that we will make political accommodation with anyone who’s committed to treating the biospheric crisis as the priority, and my personal life shouldn’t play any role in that.

Kate Morris No. We categorically reject violence, even against property. These people think they’re heroes, but they don’t understand what they’re opening the door to. The entire movement is now dealing with law enforcement scrutiny and harassment. Right-wing violence has never been worse, and these pipeline bombers—they will exacerbate that. They’re endangering everything we’re working for. On a more philosophically macro level, as soon as you pick up a brick, bat, or gun and tell yourself that this is the only way, then there is no end to what you will do.

There are undoubtedly components of ecofeminism I find compelling, just like there are components of Marx or Adam Smith or Heidegger I find compelling. But any earth-goddess-mother-hen squawking, no f—— thank you. I enjoy a grand vista as much as the next gal, but ultimately the solutions to our crisis are going to come from stuff like industrial carbon capture to produce building materials and hydrogen by electrolysis. We need the technocrats, scientists, wonks, and we need hard-headed women thinking about the built environment of our societies.

The history of capital accumulation has also been a history of women’s subordination and environmental degradation. Those three things are so intimately connected that you can’t unwind them. Our current order was built on the enslavement of women who were treated as free, on-call labor in the home. Until recently, any woman who bucked this domesticated chattel system and displayed any economic or sexual autonomy was imprisoned, tortured, burned at the stake, drowned—before the term “witch hunt” was used exclusively by insecure, baby-dicked men.

there has to be an “other” for that system to maintain because it sees a world of scarcity and the only solution is an inequitable hoarding of resources. Part of that “other” will always be women, and bitches are kidding ourselves if we think otherwise. If a system views everything in the biosphere as a resource, whether it’s buffalo, maize, fresh water, a gas deposit, or our internet data, it’s going to view women as extractive resources as well.

As if he knew the only people who actually believed in the power of public relations and advertising were the troubled boardrooms that thought it could save their skin. One had to play into the myth of the fixer. The puppeteer. Merlin.

And while your lobbyists will attempt to introduce every rider and poison pill on the menu, what you need more than anything is an open revolt of public opinion. Without further ado…”

“The response from industry has been familiar, straight from the playbook: Use backdoor groups to continue casting doubt on the science, question the cost of taking action, debate the motives of those demanding action while facing outward with a pro-environmental agenda. The disutility of denialism was revealed by Russ Mackowski’s presidential bid. The conversation has changed, and you must change with it.”

“Never once has climate been a first-tier campaign issue. Yet in the past election it sometimes felt as if it was the only thing anyone was talking about. Impassioning hard-core resistance will be a given, but it’s that persuadable middle this campaign must rally. We’ve spent two months analyzing strategies in four test markets: Chattanooga, Champaign-Urbana, Flagstaff, and Columbus. I’ll tell you what we found: People like Kate Morris. They like her message, her optimism, her spirit, her bluntness. Most of all, they like that this attractive young wildwoman worked to help elect a moderate Republican administration that seems to want to do something about this issue. Where does that leave us? I’m sure some of our competitors have told you that you need to reposition this choice as being about freedom. Keep the heavy hand of government away from my SUV, et cetera. Well, my father had this expression: ‘Kid, that dog won’t hunt.’ ”

“For a public that has stopped trusting these companies, you must now say…” I read the caption aloud as it floated in misty block letters on the table. “We are faced with a challenge unlike anything in the history of the human race.” An image of Obama at his inauguration. The next, of children planting trees in a barren landscape. “We are told calamity will be impossible to prevent.” An image of doctors and nurses administering to patients during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by another of wind farms and solar panels. “We are told there is no hope.” An image of a coastal town laid waste by a hurricane and a family in silver foil blankets, a woman weeping upon finding her home burned down to the foundation. “We say: Not on our watch.”

“From scientists to teachers, engineers to urban planners, students to community organizers, we are coming together to face the incredible challenge of climate change. Joined by millions of activists across the country, the Sustainable Future Coalition is an unprecedented collaboration of over one hundred major American companies pursuing one goal: the transformation of the American economy to a zero-carbon future. Together, we can win the battle against climate change and ensure generations of Americans a brighter, healthier, happier future. We are stronger together. And together we are the Green New Deal.” Beneath WE ARE THE GREEN NEW DEAL, spaceship Earth spun against the black tapestry of space.

“The message,” I went on, as if I’d always planned to explain, “is one of inclusiveness, of working together against impossible odds. The heuristic is that industry is not just embracing the Green New Deal—you are the Green New Deal.”

Resurrecting the Green New Deal on our terms means we can co-opt the political center while inflaming the passions of the Right and hard Left.” I found myself speaking. “Our aim is not to rebrand any particular company but to create a compelling case for your members to maintain the social license to operate.”

“The Green New Deal will be whatever we say it is. This includes solar radiation management and other geoengineering techniques that, according to studies, could allow your members to continue exploiting their reserves well into the twenty-second century. There are sub-strategies as well. You get on board with renewable deployment as panacea and shift the attention and passion to environmental justice by highlighting diverse hiring practices in minority communities. The polling on this is impressive.”

“Yes, but this means we’re admitting that it’s real.” Duncan-Michaels brought his hand down on the table in a karate chop, and with each phrase chopped again. “That has always been our last line of defense, and then it’s only a matter of time before we have nowhere left to retreat.” “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the room’s gaze as my tone gained a blade. “Why are we even here then? Did you want us to tell you that all will be well if you just keep running ads extolling the virtues of algae fuels? You’re looking at the birth of a revolution.”

Any hard-left movement is susceptible to purity attacks. If you spend a handful of dollars creating the sense that she is not pure, that she’s ignoring queer Latinx voices or silencing frontline communities or marginalizing this group or that group, they’ll turn on her. Stoke proxies that call her a sellout doing the bidding of the nuclear industry. That’s a huge wedge in their movement. Find a way to discredit her in the eyes of her fans and turn her greatest asset into a liability.” “Nobody can destroy a lefty movement like lefties themselves.”

“They can’t help it. They love eating their own. Next, get into her personal life, but be careful. It has to reach the public eye by accident. You can’t slime her outright, but she proudly talks about her open relationship. There are opportunities in that.” He nodded. “No, I know, but that’s been tough. She’s been bulletproof. You and I should stay away from talking about this, but whatever can be dredged up about her allies in Congress will be dredged. Although,” he smirked, “from what I hear, Joy LaFray has some serious kompromat lying around, and her ego won’t let her not put the name LaFray on this bill…” “Well, all of that takes a back seat to the most vital element anyway.”

“The word ‘terrorism’ is the most powerful marketing tool of the twenty-first century. It doesn’t matter that Morris keeps disavowing these people blowing up oil pipelines and gas pads, you have to make her do it again and again and again every time she’s near a microphone. See if she can swim with that shackle on her ankle.” “You have a lot of swagger.” I gave one shoulder a twitch of an uncaring shrug. “Maybe. Fem...

One came to understand that we all purchased, voted, worshiped, and loved in unconscious obedience to narratives we thought were original, but which were largely dreamed up in sterile boardrooms like the one in New York. Then we went and called these stories our passions and dreams.

You’ve heard them called derechos, but a “land hurricane” is more apt. And tonight, when you get home to find Toby mashing a fistful of peas into pulp and Raquel anxiously watching the Weather Channel, you know another superstorm is on its way.

THE MIDTERMS The Republican Party had shattered its chains. Gone were the Obama-era Tea Partiers, careful to disguise their racism behind a veneer of concern for the deficit. Vanquished were the squishy Trumpist apparatchiks trying to remain obsequious under shifting sands of presidential whims. This new crop were honest-to-God Klansman, theocrats, and outspoken fascists. Top priorities included bringing the death penalty for abortion doctors and any woman who sought the procedure, an end to birthright citizenship, and a Muslim registry, once and for all.

The compromise was good enough, though: a rising tax on fossil fuels at the point of origin, with the money to be redistributed to every taxpayer and some set aside to buy off industry and invest in adaptation efforts; an additional host of regulations would be phased in, and the government would spend $2.8 trillion over ten years to accelerate decarbonization, help move displaced workers into the clean tech economy, and begin work on drawdown efforts and other environmental remediation projects with half the money to be targeted at a variety of impoverished and vulnerable communities.

There were stories about the troll farms set up in India, the Philippines, and Russia where wealthy interests could contract out an avalanche of hate and bile as easily as ordering food through an app. By simply dripping the nectar, one could draw real hornets. Then there was the sophisticated nudge tactics and AI targeting an individual’s psychology, based on their perception of the issue using predictive analytics.

“People are being fed news, opinion, and content tailored to specific fears and insecurities. On my feed, I might get a bit of body-shaming, warnings that my eggs might be dry, inter-Asian identity politics—it’s a highly specific psychological package. It’s not just the right wing getting goosed—our members and allies are being nudged like this. They’re getting opinion filtered to them that the legislation is a betrayal.”

straight days. Advocating for climate legislation, you can’t help but believe the weather to be a complicit force, an anthropomorphized boogeyman creeping closer and closer to the murder cabin even as all the partygoers assure you no one’s out there with an axe. When we needed people to take to the streets, it was more or less impossible. Twelve inches of rain fell over the Beltway in three days. East Potomac Park was underwater, and the Southwest Waterfront had cars floating down the streets.

Pollution Reduction, Infrastructure, and Research Act—the refund mechanism having been chopped out—was signed into law on October 4, 2030. A month later, most of the Far Right candidates denying the reality of climate change, promising new detention facilities for immigrants, and new curbs to the civil rights of Muslims, environmentalists, and other agitators against the state, won their elections.

As I cut through Foggy Bottom, I marveled at the normality the city could produce in the face of cataclysm. The terrifying future becomes ever more certain, and yet after some television squawking, a few despairing tweets, op-eds, and news analysis AIs telling humans what to think, people go back to their lives.

She didn’t perform the stations of the cross prescribed by the woke hive mind, and this made her enemies.

Corey made a small, unamused sound. He set the knife down and sat up. “Okay, Tony. Level with me then. We’ve got sunny day flooding at high tide that’s swamping our projects. Obviously, the cemetery incident was a bit of a black eye. But is this sea level rise—is this thing going to be real?” Tony just stared at him, blinking. “Are you fucking mad? Corey, I’ve been telling you this for twenty-five goddamn years. I wrote an entire fucking book about it.” “Yeah, but what are we talking here? Like a foot, maybe a couple feet—that’s manageable. But then you’ve got doomsayers going around telling people it’s going to be six feet. Six feet? How’s that even possible?” Tony slapped his forehead without even thinking of how theatrical it might look. “Corey, you’ll be lucky as hell if it’s only six. Do you know what the Thwaites Glacier is? Or the Pine Island Glacier? That’s the whole reason I’m down here. That was my whole presentation to the city.”

To let the infotainment bath of the day stream over you was to slowly scrub away at the skin of your own humanity.

“Dad, have you seen the news?” He stopped. That sound in her voice. “Not since yesterday?” “The fires. Right in LA.”

Watching him from afar all these years, I’d thought it impossible that he actually believed his own bullshit, that he was anything but a grifter, but now, watching him, I had to wonder. I never told Fred about my night with him.

“And you think CLK’s stemming the fallout from that somehow? Love came out of the closet. He has a husband. People love a redemption story. The States have a thousand billionaires who all stomp their feet because they want to play kingmaker. Folks have tried to guarantee themselves candidates since the advent of democracy. Trust me, it never quite works out.”

I’ve become radicalized in the sense that politics have now infested the government’s scientific agencies so thoroughly that we must essentially advocate for the continued existence of sound science and the policy it demands as this global emergency barrels forward. What follows here, I fear, will be less than helpful, and will cover the major domestic events of 2032 and their impact on an increasingly chaotic and unhinged political race that is fracturing as never before an already anomic American polity.

the villain’s speech from the subpar action movie remains trenchant, if appallingly scripted: “We live in a contemporary Tower Babel, and inside that tower is a sorcerer’s stone. But only a lucky few understand how to wield it. Those who do can feel its power, and that power is seductive.” Dreck, to be sure, and perhaps too simplistic an explanation for the media empire he has built. He is tapping into real emotions of frustration and disillusionment, but a con it remains.

I was coming up through Quantico after 9/11. I knew a lot of what was happening was counterproductive to the goal of finding and stopping the people who’d do the country harm. I was around during Trump when the bureau was effectively at war with a traitor. None of that scares me as much as the efforts to politicize us now. It would be helpful if you could alert certain allies in Congress and the White House.” “I assure you, Agent Chen, I will.”

Vic Love is going to win this election, and he has a track record with law enforcement. What he’s done with policing in this country—and that was before he was even elected to public office. Word I’m hearing is he wants to turn the bureau upside down. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are goading us to shut down task forces on, if you ask me, much more dangerous groups. Militias and white nationalists. We’re getting resources yanked from important operations left and right, and it’s all political pressure.” “A troubling situation, I agree, but I’m not sure that 6Degrees doesn’t constitute the more potent threat.” “You haven’t seen the intelligence on the League then.”

It is a testament to the rightward march, not of the country but of the financiers of its politicians, that this has occurred in only a few election cycles. L. Victor Love’s nomination is its crowning achievement; a handsome and masculine homosexual military veteran and businessman who, when posing with his husband shirtless in lifestyle magazines with their impressive abdominal muscles on display, seems to check every box. Yet even a dedicated Democrat like Seth can see that Love serves a specific constituency. His mantra this election has been “climate security,” a refrain meant to assuage progressive voters, while signaling that we as a nation will continue to arm the lifeboats, as the expression goes.

I’ve become fascinated by what historian Daniel Boorstin calls pseudo-events: orchestrated happenings meant to spark, sway, or deter public opinion.

One thing we’ve learned about dangerous men is that it’s usually how they are dangerous that surprises, and Love remains the down card in the poker game. There is a fear and anger beneath the surface of every society, and certainly every empire, waiting to be activated. The years of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic decline, increasing inequality, news of the plutocratic class gorging itself on the commonweal, widespread addiction, extreme weather events, and psychological despair have, I fear, primed the body politic to accept radical interventions.

Rarely have I encountered such a catastrophizing personality as Ned Stark. He’d called me once, panicked and begging for the use of a government plane to get him to Los Angeles in the midst of the El Demonio-Los Angeles Complex Fire. I obliged only because his child was apparently trapped in the city. I thought I’d never hear from him again. That he found and saved her—the odds were simply unrealistic. He thanked me awkwardly in a handwritten letter.

I don’t need to tell any of you about the tipping points we’re blowing past. Arctic sea ice loss, coral bleaching, the city of Los Angeles burns to the ground and no one bats an eye.

History demonstrates that the most powerful empires, in the end, turn out to be surprisingly fragile. With its expansive coastlines and fire exposure in the west, multiple studies have concluded that the North American continent is in fact extremely vulnerable to climate chaos. We see environmental calamity manifesting in the fracture of our political system, which over the course of the last thirty years has responded to increasingly frequent institutional crises with escalating degrees of gridlock and mismanagement.

A new dark age brims on the horizon. Religious fanaticism, ethnic factionalism, and political extremism will engulf the planet, and the pillage of the natural world will indeed accelerate as the elite make one last futile attempt to gather as much capital as possible in an effort to wall themselves off from the inevitable. Perhaps this is why I remain funereal about the coming election. Civilization’s abrupt retreat will be marked the world over by every flavor of warring chief in crisp, elegantly tailored suits murdering to obtain power in the hope that they might rule this barbaric and alien age.

The Dems finally take the Senate back, and they’re ready to rubber-stamp anything! As long as he gives a speech from a corporate diversity training handbook. He’s executing a textbook authoritarian takeover, and he’s already got practice. His company’s been privatizing the police force of every city in the country for the last decade. And now he’s putting in Xuritas cronies at DOJ. Then the CIA and FBI will both be replaced by loyalists. And we’re the ones who saw all this coming, right? And laid infrastructure for resistance, you know? And Vic Love knows it!”

Now the Senate Democrats were behaving not unlike their Republican colleagues had in their pathetic deference to Trump: playacting concern without doing much of anything to stop a clear and present danger. Dance with the one who brought you, and all. “Look, Ash, if you need anything from me, obviously, I’d do whatever…” He trailed off. “I’m not even sure what I’m offering. Help of any kind, I guess.”

Food prices had risen for the ninth straight month, the effects of the Great Eastern Flood continuing in the grain markets. Love was combating the climate crisis by creating the White House Office of Climate Security, to be headed by obvious fascist-apparatchik-in-waiting Admiral Michael Dahms. “Sustainability is lethality,” Dahms said in his first presser. Desperate Democrats tried to explain away Love’s behavior by pointing to his reparations commission or all the women he’d appointed to his cabinet, including Sarah Caperno, the first female secretary of defense.

“Jerome Greenstreet is a hack vizier of Victor Love. He’s a Xuritas lackey looking to shred whatever’s left of the Constitution. Why would I give a fuck what he thinks?”

‘The whole point of Climate X is to build an antidote to the alienation and desperation people sometimes don’t even know they’re feeling,” she told the agents. “That you guys are probably feeling. Politics has become entirely about individual self-expression instead of collective revolution, and I’ve been trying to push back against self-referentialism and sanctimony and dead-end radicalism. We want to reorient people around a shared vision.’ ”

“According to my contacts, Love is trying to merge his own security empire with the normative functions of the DOJ, FBI, Homeland, CIA,” said Tom. “Moving quick but not too quick.”