Global solutions begin in Massachusetts, where Tip O'Neil first declared that all politics is local, including how to deal with CO2. While mayors elsewhere share the Constitutions dim view of treating with foreign princes and potentates, ours regard the Kyoto treaty as a town ordinance: "Both Worcester and Newton are committed...a 75-85 percent reduction in greenhouse gases is necessary...Massachusetts must act now!"
Atmospheric activism is old in New England. In the17th century , Newton's Pilgrim Fathers scorned Salem's failure to get carbon offsets for witch burning, and the Puritan Synod of 1679's wimp-out on the death penalty for smoking after fornication. But since then CO2 has burgeoned, and to achieve a 75% reduction, each latter day Newtonian must take 300 tons of CO2 out of circulation -- wherever will they put it all?
Some may valiantly attempt to internalize the problem, by inhaling CO2 recreationally, or using it to freeze jack O'lanterns, and inflate bicycle tires, soccer balls, and whoopee cushions. Storing it as a liquid won't do, for building steel tanks entails CO2-intensive coal mining and
smelting, and leakage could turn Newton Reservoir into a fizzing
slough of Vichy water. Clearly, a more solid solution is needed.
In this, Nature has smiled on Newtonians anxious to come to her aid -- carbon dioxide forms dry ice. However, paving Newton's streets with 26 million tons of dry ice blocks might have a chilling effect on property taxes, and few want dry ice in the swimming pools in their back yards. The solution to the NIMBY problem may lie in seizing front yards by eminent domain, while allowing households to arrange their CO2 blocks there as pyramids, faux gates of Babylon, replicas of the Lincoln Memorial, or bobsled runs for their 2.3 children.
This solves the CO2 problem but what of the worst and foremost greenhouse gas, water vapor? Since the end of the last Ice Age, it has been entering the atmosphere at a frightening rate, and there is a hundred times more of it to be disposed of than carbon dioxide.
Never underestimate Yankee ingenuity. Humidity condenses readily on frigid dry ice, and hardy New Englanders are so used to snow that a few extra billion tons of frost downtown may go unnoticed, for with enough shovels, city crews can spread the fluffy white stuff to a uniform thickness. As any igloo dweller will tell you, snow is splendid insulation, and a hundred feet or two will insure the township's dry ice lasts for eons, allowing its positive climate impact to be compounded by the Law Of Unintended Consequences.
The bracing winds descending from the icy Newton plateau will inspire nearby towns to follow its example, and the regional cooling trend will grow as each winter's snows adhere to the heaps of dry ice adorning adjacent village greens. As the snowy landscape rises, and temperatures fall, Cambridge -- no stranger to freeze movements -- will disappear beneath the first of many second growth New England glaciers
Since a snow covered suburb reflects more sunlight back into space than a shining city on a hill, as the phenomenon spreads, the Commonwealth will soon revert to the state of nature in which Native Americans discovered it, in days so remote that woolly mammoths and Republicans still roamed the land. It will be something to give thanks for, if a place can be found to thaw the turkey.
A masterful post.
Complete with throw-away proboscidean refs. and a post-Newtonian vision.
Posted by: Climateer | October 10, 2007 at 11:13 AM