silver-haired CEO, Sheldon Crowley pushed a button under the desk in the stone-walled study of his château, high in the hills above Sartène on the French island of Corsica, and a huge screen rose silently from the depths of a cedar sideboard. Crowley switched on CNC to find the news was not good. The newsreader was outlining a dramatic shift in White House policy.
‘Speaking in Huntsville, Ontario, before a meeting of the leaders of the G7 countries, President McGovern described global warming as our greatest challenge. Here’s a little of what he had to say.’
The camera cut to vision of the president. ‘The warming of our planet is the greatest crisis facing humankind today.’ Standing at the edge of a lake in Ontario’s Muskoka Municipality, the tall, distinguished Texan cut a powerful figure. ‘97 per cent of scientists now agree – this warming is primarily due to human activity, and in particular, our burning of fossil fuels,’ the president warned. ‘After the failures of the climate change summits, especially in Copenhagen, it will be up to countries like the United States and the other members of the G7 to show leadership. To that end, in the United States, I will shortly be introducing legislation on carbon that will see tough new emissions standards, particularly for coal-fired power stations.’
Crowley watched the broadcast, his anger growing. EVRAN’s stakes in the coal industry were massive. The multinational controlled some of the world’s largest coal mines, over half of the power stations in the United States, and many more around the globe. Emission controls would slash hundreds of millions from the EVRAN bottom line.
‘We need market-based solutions to climate change,’ the president continued, ‘and for the big polluters, that will mean a charge of around US $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. It will also mean an increase in the price of fossil fuels. We can’t leave it to the fossil-fuel industry, which is driven by huge profits, to regulate itself; we need to level the playing field so that wind, solar, and wave technology can compete. So I’m very pleased to see that China, now the world’s second largest and fastest growing economy, has been invited to attend the G7 meeting here in Canada, and I’m very much looking forward to my discussions with the president of the People’s Republic.’
‘A radical change in policy for President McGovern,’ the news anchor intoned, ‘and as some analysts have observed, it’s doubtful that McGovern would have pushed for a fee on carbon emissions if he were facing re-election, but as a man in his second term, he perhaps sees this as the legacy of his presidency . . . Now to news at home. Convicted murderer Wesley Robinson’s last-minute bid for clemency has been rejected by the governor of Oklahoma. Robinson was convicted of the assassination of oil executive Marshall Bradley, and will be executed by lethal injection at ten a.m. tomorrow at Oklahoma’s State Penitentiary in McAlester. In other news —’
Crowley angrily flicked the switch and the screen disappeared into its recess. He rose from his desk and stared through the château’s large double-glazed windows, toward the distant coast of Corsica thousands of feet below, and the blue Mediterranean beyond. The castle dated back to the fifteenth century, when the viceroy of Corsica built it to control the central area of the island, and its original purpose mirrored Crowley’s plans for the wider world. But if Washington was going down the carbon-tax route, the impact on EVRAN would be catastrophic.
Crowley had always been a big donor to both sides of politics, including to McGovern, whom he’d met with several times. He’d urged the president to can any idea of punishing business for emissions, but clearly that influence was waning, and for Crowley, getting his own man elected to the White House – someone he could control – was now the only way forward. If
‘Speaking in Huntsville, Ontario, before a meeting of the leaders of the G7 countries, President McGovern described global warming as our greatest challenge. Here’s a little of what he had to say.’
The camera cut to vision of the president. ‘The warming of our planet is the greatest crisis facing humankind today.’ Standing at the edge of a lake in Ontario’s Muskoka Municipality, the tall, distinguished Texan cut a powerful figure. ‘97 per cent of scientists now agree – this warming is primarily due to human activity, and in particular, our burning of fossil fuels,’ the president warned. ‘After the failures of the climate change summits, especially in Copenhagen, it will be up to countries like the United States and the other members of the G7 to show leadership. To that end, in the United States, I will shortly be introducing legislation on carbon that will see tough new emissions standards, particularly for coal-fired power stations.’
Crowley watched the broadcast, his anger growing. EVRAN’s stakes in the coal industry were massive. The multinational controlled some of the world’s largest coal mines, over half of the power stations in the United States, and many more around the globe. Emission controls would slash hundreds of millions from the EVRAN bottom line.
‘We need market-based solutions to climate change,’ the president continued, ‘and for the big polluters, that will mean a charge of around US $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. It will also mean an increase in the price of fossil fuels. We can’t leave it to the fossil-fuel industry, which is driven by huge profits, to regulate itself; we need to level the playing field so that wind, solar, and wave technology can compete. So I’m very pleased to see that China, now the world’s second largest and fastest growing economy, has been invited to attend the G7 meeting here in Canada, and I’m very much looking forward to my discussions with the president of the People’s Republic.’
‘A radical change in policy for President McGovern,’ the news anchor intoned, ‘and as some analysts have observed, it’s doubtful that McGovern would have pushed for a fee on carbon emissions if he were facing re-election, but as a man in his second term, he perhaps sees this as the legacy of his presidency . . . Now to news at home. Convicted murderer Wesley Robinson’s last-minute bid for clemency has been rejected by the governor of Oklahoma. Robinson was convicted of the assassination of oil executive Marshall Bradley, and will be executed by lethal injection at ten a.m. tomorrow at Oklahoma’s State Penitentiary in McAlester. In other news —’
Crowley angrily flicked the switch and the screen disappeared into its recess. He rose from his desk and stared through the château’s large double-glazed windows, toward the distant coast of Corsica thousands of feet below, and the blue Mediterranean beyond. The castle dated back to the fifteenth century, when the viceroy of Corsica built it to control the central area of the island, and its original purpose mirrored Crowley’s plans for the wider world. But if Washington was going down the carbon-tax route, the impact on EVRAN would be catastrophic.
Crowley had always been a big donor to both sides of politics, including to McGovern, whom he’d met with several times. He’d urged the president to can any idea of punishing business for emissions, but clearly that influence was waning, and for Crowley, getting his own man elected to the White House – someone he could control – was now the only way forward. If
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