Friday 11th November

Diya hated talking to rich people, but she was good at it. She was one herself, or had been, though that sense of isolated entitlement never quite leaves you, she feared. The lingering rich needed most to be made to feel that they were winning, in charge, going of their own free will, even as the sea overtook them. So, that’s what Diya offered them.

            “This, my esteemed friends, is the kind of glory your money can buy.”

Diya stood at the prow, shouting to be heard over the wind and the waves and the low hum of the sail yacht’s electric control motor. Her audience sat on cushioned benches bolted to the deck of the boat. They drank mimosas and wore gold ‘VIP’ badges which glinted in the summer sun, an ego-stroking touch Diya was particularly fond of.

She waved at the octagonal structure looming ahead of them. It looked impressively industrial, in that very 20th century way. But was also draped with greenery, vertical crops hanging in sheets from four of the sides. Around the structure the open ocean was broken by smaller works—a farming flotilla of rafts and buoys, beneath which hung yet more crops: kelp, scallops, mussels, fish traps, and soil bags growing a dozen kinds of artisanal aquatic vegetables. It was one of the more impressive offshore agriculture projects in the region, providing significant fish protein to nearby Buenos Aires and helping reduce local acidification levels in the surrounding waters. But Diya wanted to keep her audience’s attention on the rig.

“The platform you see before you began life at a shipyard in Itaguaí, Brazil, at the cusp of the Transition Era,” Diya continued. “It was destined to be an offshore oil drilling rig pulling toxic hydrocarbons out of the Argentine Basin, at the behest of a hungry market and hungrier investors. But we have found a better use for it. Mr. Campbell?”

Her audience turned to Noah, who grabbed hold of a rope and hauled himself up to stand unsteadily beside her. She had brought Noah along to explain the technical details of the storage project, but also to remind her guests of the powerful unions they might come up against if they said no. She would be the carrot, Noah would play the stick.

“Far below us, under the ocean floor, is a large, porous formation of sedimentary rock,” Noah explained. “Right now those pores are filled with saline—salt water. With robots and special concrete-setting microbes, we have fashioned that formation into one of the world’s first carbon waste reservoirs. Carbon dioxide is transported here in a flexible undersea pipeline from an air capture plant tethered to the offshore wind and solar farm a few dozen klicks further out. Here it is pumped down into the reservoir, where it forces the saline out into the ocean and pretty much stays put. The technical details are obviously more complicated, but I promise you the chemistry is too boring to be worth getting into. The gist of it is, we take clean energy, use it to fix waste carbon out of the atmosphere, then put that sky trash more or less back where it came from—underground, where it contributes to neither radiative forcing nor ocean acidification. Questions?”

“Why do all this, instead of planting more trees?” asked a man with thick plastic sunglasses—showy and expensive given the limits on non-essential plastic manufacturing.

“As I understand it,” Noah said, “that’s an ongoing debate at the COP—the balance of these strategies, anyway. But one answer is nutrient bottlenecks. We’ve got a lot of waste carbon, but that’s not true of everything we’d need to do huge amounts of afforestation. Another is land, which people don’t always want to give up to plant carbon dark forests. Plus, because of the sensitivity of weather systems, if you plant a new forest in one spot, it can reduce sequestration in a neighboring area. A third answer is time. Industrial air capture works somewhat faster than trees mature.

“And finally, when trees eventually die, they release much of the carbon they captured back into the air—usually on a shorter timeframe than we are looking for with carbon storage. That’s fine when you’re working at scale. You count the forest, not the trees, as it were. Still, forests catch fire, trees burn, and then you’re set way back on your drawdown. Living systems take a very different kind of management. Nothing wrong with that, but we think it’s better to put as big a chunk of the problem as we can away for good, and not all in the tree planting basket.”

“Why the pipeline?” someone else called out. “Why not just do the capture right here?”

“Eventually, yes, we hope to incorporate generation, capture, and disposal all into the same facilities. But right now these pieces are largely being built out in a modular way while the carbon trades find their feet. The other reason is that we might want to pipe CO2 in from other sites, depending on the eventual capacity of the reservoir and where the solar surplus shakes out.”

“You don’t know the capacity of the formation?” A bottle blonde in the back raised a skeptical eyebrow. She wore a high-fashion version of the jumpsuits coming out of the new European clothing provision houses—a statement of either scorn or envy for the empowered masses, Diya didn’t know which.

“It’s hard to know anything for sure about anything that far underground,” Noah said, unfazed. “This isn’t some big cave we’ve dug. We’re talking about rocks, under more rocks, under the ocean. But we have sensors, we know where the carbon goes and whether it stays there. The biggest challenge now is building an organization that can ensure the integrity of those sensors and the data coming from them, and be financially responsible for any leaks that occur over the minimum time we want the carbon to stay put. Say about 500 years. Which, I guess, is where you all come in.”

Diya took the prow again.

“Esteemed friends, you know I have brought you here today to show you the vital work funded by the Planetary Trust. This is but one of hundreds of beautiful, state-of-the-art storage sites we are building. They are true marvels, a great gift to all the world and every living thing in it, and to a hundred generations yet to be born. We are also funding a great deal of the aforementioned afforestation, and countless other projects that benefit the planet as a whole. But when something benefits me, I pay for it. When something benefits a city or a nation, that city or nation pays for it. Who pays for something that benefits everyone? We need a new kind of institution, one whose mandate is both broad and long. That is why most of the parties to the UNFCCC individually—soon to be followed by the UN as a whole—have instituted a global wealth tax that pays into the Planetary Trust.”

The mention of taxes made the crowd shift uncomfortably.

“I know, I know,” Diya said, giving them a knowing smile. “A topic sure to ruin an otherwise lovely day out on the yacht. That’s why I’m here to offer you an alternative. All of you control significant private assets, and while your investments have been smart, much needed, even world changing, we now have ever more data showing that private mobilizations of capital are deeply inefficient for achieving long-term climate stability.

“We need to put the world’s capital into the hands of the Planetary Trust if we are going to build projects like the platform you see before you and operate them for the next five hundred or one thousand years. And we need that money fast, because, esteemed friends—we are still up against it. The storm our fine host city experienced this week is a reminder of the tipped-over world we are desperately trying to right. Every year that passes with this much carbon in the air continues our planet’s slide toward the hothouse. We need every resource available to us to build the removal industry at scale and at speed!”

At this Diya stepped down from her perch and took up a champagne flute of mimosa. She held it up, as if making a toast.

“My most esteemed friends, today I ask you to make this possible. Hand over your assets to the Planetary Trust, so that we might accelerate our plans and stabilize the world. Why wait for the wealth tax to siphon them away year by year? I know, as well as any of you, the burden of these vast, clunky masses of capital. Masses that many of us never asked to be charged with keeping. They are in their own ways as toxic as the oil this rig had once been built to dig up. Relieve yourselves of them, put them to better use. And in return, you will be cared for all your life, with freedom to go and live as you please, a citizen of every country party to the Trust. You will be honored forever on these monuments for your generosity. You can build us a stable climate future. And if we can do this, we can do asteroids! We can handle the many dangers that lurk in deep time. The Planetary Trust can ensure a prosperous human future where your names will be remembered!”

She swept back up to the prow and pointed at one of the massive struts lifting the platform above the water, which had just come into view. On it were freshly carved names—famous names of ultrarich people Diya had already talked out of their fortunes. Diya raised a toast once more.

“To you! May your names be honored for a hundred generations!”

She drank. Many of the others drank with her. Those who did not glanced away, not able to meet her eye. She’d get them too, soon enough.

Diya’s speech was done. She did not mention how paltry the perks and pensions and honors were compared with the titanic sums they’d be giving over to voluntary democratization. She did not mention the increasing legal precedent for holding the megarich accountable for what their investment portfolios paid for in terms of fossil extraction, deforestation, ecosystem damage, and political dithering. The Hague’s climate trials had a momentum all their own now, with prosecutors always hungry for new enemies to feed into the environmental justice maw. She did not mention what she would hint at later, in private conversations: that the best way to avoid a dangerous audit was to just give their money up now, after which prosecutors would look the other way. She did not mention that the unions Noah was representing were clamoring for the Trust to move forward with more hostile expropriations of such “stuck capital.”

Noah caught up with her on the ride back.

“Heckuva pitch,” he said. “If I were a lonely, anxious billionaire, I’d be jumping to give you my money. Though, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, seeing their egos stroked like this. They are my class enemies, after all.”

“There’s only brief catharsis in seeing your enemies humiliated,” Diya said. “Letting your enemies save face, however, can prevent them from becoming your enemies again. Noah, understand, these people used to basically run the world. Now we are, shall we say, laying them off from that position. Today’s theatrics are just the difference between saying ‘you’re fired’ and saying ‘we’re letting you go.’ If that difference helps them shuffle quietly into the night, I say we let them have their dignity.”

“Still, it rankles. Why should some rich assholes get their names on that strut, instead of the workers who actually built the thing?”

“Because the world isn’t fair, Noah. Not just yet, anyway.”

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In New South Wales, underneath Burning Mountain, an eternal flame smoulders. For six thousand years it has been alight, one hundred feet below the sandstone ground. The flame symbolises no religion nor commemorates anything of any cultural significance. All day and all night, it burns. If we do not do something about it, it will outlive us all.

In Arlene’s Bar, the mood had been glum even before Mick and Clive shambled in and brought it down a notch or two further.

‘You better not be thinking of driving that pickup home,’ said Arlene as the boys ordered their third beers, the first two having been dealt with in no more than a few swift gulps. Arlene was a welcoming hostess and a loyal confidante, but she could adopt the tone of a fearsome headmistress at will. A sign above the kitchen door read, ‘Complaints must be submitted in triplicate, countersigned by the last two Popes and their wives…’

‘Nah,’ said Mick. ‘The old lady said, “Go get Clive, and don’t come back ‘til you’ve had a skinful. Me and the dog’ll pick you up in the ute come closing time.”’

‘Your old ute? Is that thing still on the road?’

‘Just about. I’m not sure it should be, but we’re in the middle of nowhere, what can you do?

‘And your Mother’s had her cataract op?’

‘Nah,’ said Mick. ‘I reckon the dog does most of the seeing for the two of them. It growls if she gets too close to the edge and barks if there’s a ‘roo in the road. But they get about just fine.’’

The blood abandoned Clive’s face at the thought of a hair-raising lift home. However, the more he considered it, the more it seemed like a risk worth taking.

‘Well after this week,’ he said mournfully, ‘I’m past caring anyway.’

‘You drilled your last gas gathering well?’ said Mick.

‘Yup.’

‘Not paid off the loan on the rig?’

‘Not even close.’

‘No better here, either. Our well services company ships out next week.’

‘Back on the scrap heap again?’

‘Looks like it.’

The sonorous clunk of the Swiss cow bell above the door shook them from their doleful rumination.

‘Thank God for that,’ said Arlene. ‘What a misery fest! Let’s hope it’s somebody with good news to share.’

But the newcomer was not somebody with good news to share. It was Donna, Arlene’s niece, whose usually cheerful countenance had been replaced with a face like thunder. She had just returned from Sydney, where an interview for a carbon credit company had ended in sheer frustration.

‘Seems they had a preferred candidate all along,’ she grumbled, her fingers stretched around the body of a cocktail glass, inside which was her tipple of choice, a red-and-blue Firecracker. ‘So why even bother asking me to interview?’

‘Tell me about these carbon credits,’ said Mick. ‘I’ve always been curious about them. What are the biggest opportunities?’

‘Long term, high-permanence carbon credits,’ said Donna. ‘There’s a terrible shortage and they trade for ridiculous prices.’

‘What counts as a good carbon credit?’

‘Biochar. Mineralisation. Not much else. They both store carbon in the ground for hundreds of years – and improve the soil at the same time, pretty cool.’

Clive raised his head from its position side-down on the bar.

‘So, Donna, here’s a thought. Could we get carbon credits if we were able to shut down a long-term source of CO2?’ Mick asked.

‘Maybe. Things like that depend on protocols being in place. But there are loads of new ones being written all the time.’

‘So could we put out coal seam fires? Like the one that’s been burning for thousands of years down the road at Wingen there, at Burning Mountain?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe, I guess.’

‘So,’ said Mick, ‘spinning off the top of my head…how’s this for a plan? We’re going drilling. Drilling for carbon credits.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?” asked Clive. ‘Maybe it’s time to call your old mother to pick us up. You’ve drunk too much already.’

‘Hear me out,’ said Mick, warming to his theme. ‘We drill, right? We’re born to drill. So we’re going to do some drilling that helps stop unnecessary emissions and helps slow down the climate crisis. It’s a crazy job and it seems no one is doing it. But we can.’

Mick moved over to the games area, grabbed some chalk, wiped the darts scoreboard clean and began to doodle illustrations of the plan he was forming. ‘We can get hold of some of the unused fracking rigs and go to these sites with thousands of tonnes of water. I reckon if the Macondo well can be blocked – the one on that Deepwater Horizon incident – we can put out coal seam fires. They’re much shallower.’

A small crowd began to form, alerted by the fervour of Mick’s performance. Spurred on by his audience, he hoisted a leg and pulled himself up on to the pool table.

‘It’s a perfect job for us.’ He raised a pool cue triumphantly aloft. ‘It’s a directional driller’s dream!’

‘Hey!’ yelled Arlene. ‘Get the hell down off the table or you’ll pay for a new one.’

‘Sorry,’ said Mick, climbing down. ‘Got a little carried away there.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Clive. ‘It all sounds very lovely and everything, but no one’s been putting out these fires for ever. Why now?’

‘Because world-wide they release 400 million tonnes of CO2 every year. For no good reason. There’s no gain, no economic benefit. They just burn because it’s not worth anyone’s while to put them out. So we’ll drill these wells from the side into the bottom of the seams, store up a load of water – truck it in if necessary – and then big fracking pumps will push in masses of water to flood the bottom of the seam. They’ll make a load of steam which will gradually cool down the coal, push out the air and help it go out. For the tough wells, we’ll add a load of liquid nitrogen or CO2 if necessary.’

Clive remained sceptical. ‘And who’s gonna pay for all this?’

‘Right… We get one of these smart climate consultancy crews to write us a set of fancy carbon credit protocols. Is that feasible, Donna?’

‘Sure. The really good credits earn $100 per tonne or more, but even a cheap one might be $5 or $10. There’s a global shortage of decent long term permanent carbon credits. So many companies have committed to net zero with no idea of how it’s going to be achieved.’

‘For our purposes,’ continued Mick, ‘some of the larger sites are doing hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year for decades. Pointless, massive, endless fires releasing CO2 and methane releases for absolutely no positive purposes – crazy.
At $10 per tonne for ten years of avoided emissions, each site might be worth tens of millions of bucks. That’s more than we earn on a conventional fracking job. We get paid for putting out coal seam fires and preventing unnecessary emissions. Avoided emissions like that are surely almost as good as sequestering CO2 captured from the air? We’ll start with the smaller jobs to learn the necessary skills and extend to progressively larger jobs. We’ll use satellites to find the sites and assess the emissions and small local seismic to assess the ground.’

He could tell that Clive was coming round to the idea, his friend’s face beginning to contort itself into a vision of intrigue and contemplation.

‘We can do this,’ said Clive, banging his fist onto the bar for emphasis. ‘We can get all the down hole temperature tools and other fancy oil field gear. And here’s an interesting trick we can try – we can dissolve CO2 in the water at high pressure. Although it flashes in the seam, the inert CO2 will really help snuff out the fire. We can totally do this!’

Bruce grabbed a beer mat and asked Arlene for a pen.

‘Here’s a thought. When I was younger, I was part of a start-up company. We followed a book called ‘The Beermat Entrepreneur.’

So what’s say we do the same thing this time. We’ve got the four core founders: Arlene, bar owner – you can be our CFO. Me – sales and commercial. Clive – drilling and technical. Donna – carbon credits.’

He scribbled his thoughts down onto the beer mat and laid in on the bar for the other three key players to see.

‘We can give ourselves six months to find a backer to fund the operation,’ said Clive. ‘It doesn’t have to happen overnight.’

‘As you know, I don’t give credit,’ said Arlene, ‘but as we’re now partners, I’ll let you run a food tab at the bar.’

‘We can aim to work eight hours a day,’ said Clive, ‘whenever suits, but with some core hours when we’re together to encourage us to actually do some work rather than mess about all day.’

‘Great idea! You boys can come here to the bar, 10 til 12, have lunch here. Only from the healthier option menu, though – you could both stand to lose a few pounds. You can have the big table in the window facing the road. No one usually sits there in the day anyway.’

“So now we’ve got an office, lunch and working hours, almost like a regular job.’

‘Just need a school bus,’ said Clive.

‘No worries,’ said Mick. ‘There’s a pile of old bikes in our barn we can use. We don’t even have to buy gas.’

More drinks were poured as they began to thrash out the details. Arlene slid newly refilled glasses across the bar in quick succession, Firecrackers for Donna, beers for Mick and Clive.

‘When I was in college,’ said Donna, ‘we ran a team through Climate Launchpad. They had a great boot camp programme which took us through all the basic stages and questions for starting a company and bringing on a climate solution. This ticks a lot of the boxes.’

‘Is it still going?’ asked Clive. ‘And isn’t it just for students?’

‘Not at all,’ said Donna. ‘There were some ancient teams on the programme.’ She looked at Mick and Clive and hurriedly added, ‘No offence. And yes – not only is it still going, but submissions for the next round close in six weeks!’

‘So I guess the key question is how big will the climate impact be?’ wondered Donna. ‘In the cold light of day, most of the solutions submitted to these things are next to pointless. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but it’s true.’

‘We could reach the gigatonne scale,’ said Clive, his excitement increasing by the second. ‘I’m convinced of it. If there really is 400 million tonnes of CO2 released from coal seam fires, we could aim to do a steadily growing percentage of that amount. It might not be easy to hit a gigatonne a year, but I can certainly imagine a cumulative gigatonne, no problem at all.’

‘So what do we need to cover in our application, Donna?” asked Mick.

‘Beachheads, customer discovery, ‘The Deal’, what’s the process, financials, potential size of the market, job and social impact, technology potential and the quality of the pitch.’

‘Not much then!’ said Arlene. ‘Maybe I should pour some more drinks.’

‘We can do it,’ said Clive. ‘I know we can do it. The beachhead would be coal seam fires here in Oz, then fires in Indonesia which isn’t so far, and then the rest of the world using partner teams.’

‘The Deal is always a tricky one,’ said Donna. ‘But for this it might be ‘stopping pointless CO2 emissions for high quality carbon credits.’

‘So all we need is a name,’ said Mick.

Donna’s eureka moment came as she took a sip of her Firecracker. She cried out ‘Fire Frackers!’

And that was where it all began.

A few more rounds were drunk in celebration. Nobody could remember a time when Arlene’s Bar had been so lively and buoyant. Arlene astonished everyone by announcing that drinks were on the house. Eventually, though, even Mick and Clive reached their limit.

‘Look at the time,’ said Mick. ‘Shall I call my old mother to pick us up?’

‘You know,’ said Clive, ‘I was completely downhearted when I came in, and now I feel on top of the world. I just can’t wait until tomorrow so we can get started.’

He downed the last of his remaining drink.

‘So I think, all things considered, it might be better if we ordered a taxi.’

If we can extinguish an eternal flame, we can achieve anything.

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