24 March 2006

Driveway Moment

I was standing in the corner of the main room that contains the dining table. My jaw hurt from the Persian dentist's adventures in the back of my mouth. In front of me, a muted Duke basketball team was going down to defeat to the Louisiana State Tigers.

Dinner was burning, I could smell it, and I was having one of those phone conversations that start with arousal and end curtly.

I thought about it as soon as the BBC broke the silence this morning. I padded past the bathroom, turning on the shower to see if the toxic substance I poured down the drain had really burned away the obstruction.

It seemed to be running freely now, though perhaps it had simply eaten through the pipe somewhere below me, and the suds of my shower were pooling in a hallway, or on someone's oriental rug.

It is hard to determine the downstream consequences of what we do. My unobstructed drain leads somehow to the fragile watershed of the Chesapeake Bay. I wondered how the chemicals I had used were removed from the water, or if they were at all, and somewhere out there an oyster was going to filter the poison in dilute quantity through its valves.

I have been troubled about the poor old planet for years. Not enough to stop driving my car, of course, since there are places that must be visited, and things that must be done. I have short-term obligations, and have only recently come to the realization that the short time we enjoy here under the sun is occupied exclusively with a succession of small projects.

There was a driveway moment on the radio late in the afternoon. I had been to the Pentagon to try to complete a short-term objective, and the die was cast. I found myself with an hour to kill on the way home, and stopped at the military post near Arlington to top off the gas tank and purchase a bottle of catsup.

I turned on the radio, wondering if I had time to do some laundry before starting the incineration of dinner. Two scientists were being interviewed on the consequences of Global Warming.

It was a driveway moment, one of those stories  so startling and compelling that you stay behind the wheel even after you have arrived at your destination, engine running, just to hear the end of it.

I was tempted to walk down to the garage and turn the key. Instead, I sank into the brown armchair to listen.

Based on the geological record, the last time the Greenland ice sheet melted, the ocean rose twenty feet.

Timing was uncertain, since these things seem to work in cycles of millions of years, or billions of short-term objectives. The tide is rising at a rate of one inch per year, according to regular measurements. It does not sound like a great deal, but it could still amount to a couple feet in my life, and the height of a man in our children's lives.

Bu he scientists said they didn't know. The rate of ice melt could accelerate, or the ice ages could come back.

They didn't seem to think the latter was possible, though, and then they described what Florida would look like with another twenty feet of salt water sloshing across it, or the great bay that would form where the Mississippi joins the Gulf.

I began to think of the consequences for the reconstruction of New Orleans when the scientists brought things home. The placid Potomac is essentially at sea level as it arrives in Arlington, which is where the ocean-going traffic had to anchor.

That is why most of the cities in the world are located where they are, at the interface of the lines of communication between the land and the sea.

If the sea-level rises twenty feet, the National Mall will be inundated, and the Tidal Basin will lap the foot of Capitol Hill.

I am not worried about Big Pink. We are well up the bluff, and the water will not get here. But I think it might be time to invest in levees, or maybe watertight domes.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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