The Ministry for the Future

4

Above the campus of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich rises to a forest park on top of the Zuriberg, the hill that forms the eastern flank of the city. Most of the city covers the banks of the river Limmat, which begins as the outlet of the Zurichsee and drains northward between two hills, the Zuriberg on the east and the Uetliberg to the west. Between these two hills the land is pretty flat, for Switzerland anyway, and here almost a quarter of all the Swiss have congregated to make a compact handsome city. Those lucky enough to live on the rise of the Zuriberg often think they have the best location, with a view over the roofs of the downtown, and out to the big lake to the south, and sometimes a glimpse of the Alps. In the late afternoon sun a sense of luminous calm can radiate up from this mixed vista of human and natural features. A good place. Visitors often call it boring, but the locals don’t complain.

At the Kirche Fluntern tram stop, about halfway up the Zuriberg, you can get off one of the blue trams and walk north along Hochstrasse, past an old church with a steeple that has a big clockface on it, with a bell that rings the hours. Next door to it is where one finds the offices of the Paris Agreement’s Ministry for the Future. They’re within easy walking distance of the ETH, with all its geotechnical expertise, and not far above offices of the big Swiss banks, with their immense amounts of capital, all out of proportion to Switzerland’s small size. These proximities were not accidental; for centuries now the Swiss have pursued a national policy of creating maximum safety for Switzerland by helping to increase peace and prosperity worldwide. “No one is safe until all are secure” seems to be their principle here, and in that project, geotechnical expertise and lots of money are both very useful.

That being the case, and since Geneva already hosted the headquarters of the World Health Organization and several other UN agencies, when the Paris Agreement established this new agency of theirs, Zurich forcefully made the case that Geneva was already too crowded with agencies, and expensive as a result, and after some vigorous inter-cantonal tussling, they won the bid to host the new agency. Offering rent-free the compound on Hochstrasse, and several nearby ETH buildings as well, was no doubt one of many reasons their bid succeeded.

Now the head of the ministry—Mary Murphy, an Irish woman of about forty-five years of age, ex–minister of foreign affairs in the government of the Irish Republic, and before that a union lawyer—walked into her office to find a crisis that didn’t surprise her one bit. Everyone had been transfixed with horror at the news of the deadly heat wave in India; there were sure to be immediate ramifications. Now the first of these had come.

Her chief of staff, a short slight man named Badim Bahadur, followed Mary into her office saying, “You must have heard that the Indian government is beginning a solar radiation management action.”

“Yes, I just saw it this morning,” she said. “Have they given us the details of their plan?”

“They came half an hour ago. Our geoengineering people are saying that if they do it as planned, it will equate to about the same as the Pinatubo volcanic eruption of 1991. That lowered global temperature by about a degree Fahrenheit, for a year or two. That was from the sulfur dioxide in the ash cloud that the volcano shot into the stratosphere. It will take the Indians several months to replicate that boost of sulfur dioxide, our people say.”

“Do they have the capacity to do it?”

“Their air force can probably do it, yes. They can certainly try, they’ve got the necessary aircraft and equipment. A lot of it will simply reconfigure aerial refueling technology. And planes dump fuel all the time, so that part won’t be so hard. The main problem will be getting up as high as possible, and then it’s just a matter of quantity, the number of missions needed. Thousands of flights, for sure.”

Mary pulled her phone from her pocket, tapped the screen for Chandra. Head of India’s delegation to the Paris Agreement, she was well known to Mary. It would be late in Delhi, but this was when they usually talked.

When she answered, Mary said, “Chandra, it’s Mary, can you talk for a minute?”

“For a minute, yes,” Chandra said. “It’s very busy here.”

“I’m sure. What’s this about your air force doing a Pinatubo?”

“Or a double Pinatubo, yes. This is what our academy of sciences is recommending, and the prime minister has ordered it.”

“But the Agreement,” Mary said, sitting down on her chair and focusing on her colleague’s voice. “You know what it says. No atmospheric interventions without consultation and agreement.”

“We are breaking the Agreement,” Chandra said flatly.

“But no one knows what the effects will be!”

“They will be like Pinatubo, or hopefully double that. Which is what we need.”

“You can’t be sure that there won’t be other effects—”

“Mary!” Chandra exclaimed. “Stop it right now. I know what you are going to say even before you say it. Here’s what we are sure of in India: millions of people have just died. We’ll never even know how many died, there are too many to count. It could be twenty million people. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes.”

“No. You don’t understand. I invite you to come see it in person. Really you should, just so you know.”

Mary found herself short of breath. She swallowed. “I will if you want me to.”

A long silence followed. Finally Chandra spoke, her voice tight and choked. “Thank you for that, but maybe there is too much trouble here now for us to handle such a visit. You can see in the reports. I will send you some we are making. What you need to know now is that we are scared here, and angry too. It was Europe and America and China who caused this heat wave, not us. I know we have burned a lot of coal in the last few decades, but it’s nothing compared to the West. And yet we signed the Agreement to do our part. Which we have done. But no one else is fulfilling commitments, no one is paying the developing nations, and now we have this heat wave. And another one could happen next week! Conditions are much the same!”

“I know.”

“Yes, you know. Everyone knows, but no one acts. So we are taking matters into our own hands. We’ll lower global temperatures for a few years, everyone will benefit. And perhaps we’ll dodge another massacre like this one.”

“All right.”

“We do not need your permission!” Chandra shouted.

“I didn’t mean that,” Mary said. But the line had gone dead.