"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Synopsis
By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to
irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and
vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the
Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather
pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. But the
president-elect remains optimistic and doesn't intend to give up without a fight. A
maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious
plan to save the world from disaster since FDR — and assembling a team of top
scientists and advisers to implement it. For Charlie Quibler, this means re-entering
the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For
Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman
he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president
can control — a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science
Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him. In a world where
time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost
total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks
darker each passing day. For as the last — and most terrible — of natural disasters
looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock . . . the kind of miracle
that only dedicated men and women can bring about.




SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING
By
Kim Stanley Robinson

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Stanley Robinson




1
 A New Reality

“I believe the twenty-first century can become the most important century of
human history. I think a new reality is emerging. Whether this view is
realistic or not, there is no harm in making an effort.”
—The Dalai Lama, November 15, 2005, Washington, D.C.

Why do you do what you do?
I guess because we still kind of believe that the world can be saved. We? The
people where you work?
Yes. Not all of them. But most. Scientists are like that. I mean, we’re seeing
evidence that we seem to be starting a mass extinction event.
What’s that?
A time when lots of species are killed off by some change in the environment. Like
when that meteor struck and killed off the dinosaurs.
So people hit Earth like meteor.