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Louis XIV of France famously said, “Après mois le deluge (“after me the deluge.”) It took two more Louis, but he proved right leading to several years of social disruption followed by Napoleon followed by his two attempts at a French empire.
I just finished reading The Deluge by Stephen Markley. It is a sobering look at where we might be headed in climate change over the next 20 years and who might be responsible or able to help. If you are already depressed, do not read this book. If you can’t stand to consider what may happen if the world screws up climate change, don’t read this book. If you cannot stay awake through some 900 hard cover pages, don’t read it. If you want more understanding of these issues, read this book, as you will If you want motivation to do your part.
The book’s main characters are several younger folks who take various approaches to trying to arrest global warming. Some of them favor widespread public protest and political action. Others use violence against the alleged perpetrators— primarily producers and users of fossil fuels.
The LA Times review said, “It is, if nothing else, an astonishing feat of procedural imagination, narrative construction and scientific acumen.”
Goodreads wrote,” In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.
From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.”
From The New York Times review:” in the second half … Markley’s humor and flair flatten beneath the seriousness of his purpose. He targets the inertia of our political institutions while lampooning online culture, from le wokisme to tech toys to Slapdash, a Zoom-like feature and go-to social platform. Markley’s eye is on the near future, but he’s also preoccupied with the near past, relitigating recent traumas: a Washington in lockdown, N.Y.P.D. teams fanning across Lower Manhattan and a Trump 2.0 who makes the original look like a stroll in the park. The Covid pandemic seems “long ago.” This is fiction on an impossibly grand scale. We struggle to wrap our arms around it.
Markley’s right to peer forward, though: defiant, Cassandra-like, screaming into the void. Novelists often preen as moralists, but he’s the genuine article. As humanity hurtles needlessly toward catastrophe, the powerful make and break the rules, dodging accountability and sucking up resources. Meanwhile, it’s getting hot in here, and there, and everywhere.”
At an early point, Markley writes, “We have the two most consequential experiments in the history of humankind. The first is the uncontrolled dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We know how that ends. But the second is an experiment in human community. In democracy and organization and compassion—and our willingness and ability to confront this emergency, arm in arm, together.”
Again, “Carbon will always be useful, so unless you make it expensive or illegal to burn, those interests will find a way to do so.”
Nearer the end–“The climate crisis is rapidly destabilizing the earth’s ecological systems. This, in turn is causing extreme weather events, which are having an undue impact on our civilization, unleashing violence, misery, illness, chaos, and death for millions of the world’s most vulnerable. Globally, no one knows how many people are on the move, but estimates put refugee flows at more than eighty-five million people.” Should we doubt that we can build high enough walls in those events? Should we keep trying?
The novel suggests some tools that would help but are not adopted until much too late. While I am encouraged at all the research that is going on, including carbon capture on land and sea, will we have the social and political will to keep the heat down?
Should we fail, we will likely try a bigger Ark. Who will not fit and who will decide?
Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice.
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