“And weather would get colder?”
“Yes. Not in the devastating way that the princess just alluded to, but it would get your country back toward—” He held up his hands. “I guess you could call it Hans Brinker conditions.”
The queen enjoyed the joke. “We can look forward to skating on the canals again.”
“Yes. Your farmers would have to adapt in small ways—shifting toward different varieties of seeds, changing their planting schedules. But it’s either that or end up under ten feet of salt water.”
“Now, this all disregards the fact that there would still be far too much CO2 in the atmosphere,” the queen pointed out.
“Indeed, Your Majesty. And as we discussed in Texas, the upper layers of the ocean absorb that from the air and become more acidic. It has devastating effects on coral reefs. But if I may be altogether cold-blooded for a moment—” Alastair let it hang there.
“The Netherlands doesn’t have coral reefs,” Willem said, so that no one else would have to.
The princess was visibly distressed.
“It is a thing we must say out loud,” said Willem, “because others—like Martijn Van Dyck—are going to be saying it in front of cameras and microphones. It doesn’t mean we don’t care about coral reefs. But the queen must be ready to hear from those of her citizens who will take such stances.”
“There are other techniques that might be used to address the problem of ocean acidification,” Alastair said. “They are outside of my remit for this job.”
“Some will say,” Willem added, “it’s just more geoengineering to fix a problem left over from the first round of geoengineering.”
“Alastair, hold on a moment,” the queen said. “All these changes you’re talking about—am I to understand that T.R. is creating all these global effects single-handedly just by operating Pina2bo?”
Alastair nodded. “That is the incredible leverage of SO2 in the stratosphere. It’s why people like T.R. are drawn to it.”
Saskia just blinked and shook her head.
“At its rated capacity, Pina2bo is at the lower end of the size needed to effect these changes. If there were two or three or four Pina2bos all going at once, then the changes described in my report would take place rapidly. Dramatically.”
“You mean, if he builds more guns at the Flying S Ranch? Or fires the one he has more frequently?” the queen asked. “Or . . . you’re perhaps talking about other such facilities in other parts of the world?”
“Now you ask an interesting question, mevrouw. In a way, it is the question. What happens in these models when we break things out regionally? Both as to cause and effect? Cause meaning: What if T.R. had built the gun in Alberta or Ecuador instead of West Texas? Effect meaning: How will different parts of the world be affected by Pina2bo?”
“I’ll bet the answer is complicated,” the queen said.
“If all you care about is the Netherlands, no. It’s absolutely a win for the Netherlands. Another country it’s good for is China. A clear, unambiguous win for China on multiple levels.”
Willem felt his face getting warm.
“What’s an example of a country it’s bad for?” Charlotte asked in a small voice.
“Possibly India,” Alastair said without hesitation. “Oh, their neighbors in Bangladesh will love it. It’s going to save that country. And those parts of eastern India that have similar problems to Bangladesh will also enjoy a net benefit. Western and southern India may see . . . how shall I put this . . . alteration in the monsoons.”
“Oh, my god!” Saskia exclaimed and splayed one hand out on her chest.
Alastair paused for a few moments to let the queen process this. They had all understood, from the very beginning of the conversation with T.R., that solar geoengineering was “controversial” and might have “side effects requiring further study” but that verbiage was the stuff of PowerPoint decks in Brussels. Narrowing the impact to one specific region suddenly made it very concrete and perhaps caused the queen to envision what kind of fallout—perhaps literal fallout—could result from the Netherlands openly backing any one such scheme.
The princess seemed to be more taken aback by her mother’s reaction than by what Alastair had said, but she was already googling “monsoon” and so she’d understand the significance soon enough.
When Saskia met his eye again, Alastair continued: “I’m not saying that the monsoon would stop. It never stopped in the 1990s after the Pinatubo eruption. It is a dizzyingly complicated interaction having to do with where the sun is in the sky, the topography