"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

And yet thePost had it at the back of the international section! People were talking about it the same
way they did any other disaster. There did not seem to be any way to register a distinction in response
between one coming catastrophe and another. They were all bad. If it happened it happened. That
seemed to be the way people were processing it. Of course the Khembalis would have to be extremely
concerned. The whole League of Drowning Nations, for that matter. Meaning everyone. Charlie had
done enough research on the tidal power stuff, and other coastal issues, to give him a sharpened sense
that this was serious, and perhaps the tipping point into something worse. All of a sudden it coalesced
into a clear vision standing before him, and what he saw frightened him. Twenty percent of humanity lived
on the coast. He felt like he had one time driving in winter when he had taken a turn too fast and hit an icy
patch he hadnтАЩt seen, and the car had detached and he found himself flying forward, free of friction or
even gravity, as if sideslipping in reality itself.

But it was time to go downtown. He was going to take Joe with him to the office. He pulled himself
together, got out the stroller so they would spare each other their body heat. Life had to go on; what else
could he do?

Out they ventured into the steambath of the capital. It really didnтАЩt feel that much different than the
ordinary summer day. As if the sensation of heat hit an upper limit where it just blurred out. Joe was
seatbelted into his stroller like a NASCAR driver, so that he would not launch himself out at inopportune
moments. Naturally he did not like this and he objected to the stroller because of it, but Charlie had
decorated its front bar as an airplane cockpit dashboard, which placated Joe enough that he did not
persist in his howls or attempts to escape. тАЬResistance is futile!тАЭ

They took the elevators in the Metro stations and came up on the Mall, to stroll over to PhilтАЩs office in
the old carpentersтАЩ union. A bad idea, as crossing the Mall was like being blanched in boiling air. Charlie,
as always, experienced the climate deviation with a kind of grim тАЬI Told You SoтАЭ satisfaction. But once
again he resolved to quit eating boiled lobsters. It would be a bad way to go.

At PhilтАЩs they rolled around the rooms trying to find the best spots in the falls of chilled air pouring from
the air-conditioning vents. Everyone was doing this, drifting around like a science museum exercise
investigating the Coriolis force.

Charlie parked Joe out with Evelyn, who loved him, and went to work on PhilтАЩs revisions to the climate
bill. It certainly seemed like a good time to introduce it. More money for CO2remediation, new fuel
efficiency standards and the money to get Detroit through the transition to hydrogen, new fuels and
power sources, carbon capture methods, carbon sink identification and formation,
hydrocarbon-to-carbohydrate-to-hydrogen conversion funds and exchange credit programs, deep
geothermal, tide power, wave power, money for basic research in climatology, money for the Extreme
Global Research in Emergency Salvation Strategies project (EGRESS), money for the Global Disaster
Information Network (GDIN)тАФand so on and so forth. It was a grab bag of programs, many designed
to look like pork to help the bill get the votes, but Charlie had done his best to give the whole thing
organization, and a kind of coherent shape, as a narrative of the near future.

There were many in PhilтАЩs office who thought it was a mistake to try to pass an omnibus or
comprehensive bill like this, rather than get the programs funded one by one, or in smaller related
groupings. But the comprehensive had been PhilтАЩs chosen strategy, and Charlie felt that at this late point it
was better to stick to that plan. He added language to make the revisions Phil wanted, pushing the
envelope in each case, as it seemed now, if ever, was the time to strike.