The darkest, most frightening question concerns the future. There is a basic flaw in current global climate-change computer models: Every model assumes a linear progression of temperature and climate change. But evidence found in ancient ice cores gathered in Antarctica shows that climate rarely shifts in a straight line. Rather, like a car, change progresses linearly, gaining momentum, until at some unknown point, it hits a threshold and abruptly jerks up a gear. Then all bets are off and all hell breaks loose.

The rules that govern that new gear -- the extremes of temperature of wind and storm beyond the threshold -- are all different from the previous steady state. When will we reach such a threshold? That is anyone's guess, and quite possibly beyond the limits of our current knowledge of climate science.

Oil-and-coal executives and Texas politicians, members of the so-called "Carbon Club" who are now running the United States, need to recognize the grim Catch-22 in which they've placed America and the world. While there is plenty of coal and oil in the ground, enough to power humanity for centuries, every gallon burned has the potential to disrupt global politics. Each car's exhaust plume adds to the specter of hunger and thirst and terrorism likely to stalk our new century.

But there is a way out. We simply need to reduce our use of oil and coal.

Last autumn, while America focused on the World Trade Center attacks and on attacking Afghanistan, 160 nations met in Marrakesh, Morocco, and finalized mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. This is a first decisive, though baby, step toward cutting greenhouse emissions by the 50 to 70 percent the IPCC says is needed just to stabilize global warming at current levels. Accepting the treaty, those nations put themselves on a trajectory toward renewable energy -- to tap the power of the sun and of hydrogen.

The U.S. was not among them. President Bush and ExxonMobil (a major player in scripting the fossil-fuel feeding frenzy known as the Cheney Energy Plan) made our country's path clear.

Bush withdrew America from Kyoto against the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, which warned that climate change is real and getting worse (a verdict seconded by Bush's own Environmental Protection Agency, which he derisively referred to as "the bureaucracy").

Meanwhile, America's carbon dioxide emissions increased in 2001 by 3 percent, well higher than past average rises of 1.3 percent. To blame are Presidents Clinton and Bush (the elder and the younger), congressional Republicans and many Democrats, a coal-and-oil lobby that has used savvy marketing to deny the problem, and an oblivious citizenry that has made the gas-gulping SUV the source of 50 percent of new U.S. car sales and a symbol of American greed.

Much of the rest of the world recognizes climate change as a real danger. Even in the corporate world, BP and Shell have taken first steps to rethink themselves as energy companies, researching sustainable power.

There is no logical reason why ExxonMobil can't do the same. It is one of the wealthiest corporations on earth, outspending most nation states. It would be a small matter to divert a few billion oil dollars to hydrogen fuel cells, solar, wind, or biofuel power.

They have not done this. Why not? Of course, there are financial reasons. But a deeper reason may be that oil exploration is ultimately about more than money: It is an addictive adventure in empire building. Jeremy Leggett in his book "The Climate War" recounts his oil-exploration exploits before becoming a Greenpeace activist:

"I had discovered a great romance. Looking back, I have a fancy now that it stemmed from something primeval. I remember the hunter's thrill I felt in Baluchistan, watching smears of oil seeping from the ground ... Then there were the hunter's weapons ... The drill rigs and down-hole instrument packages probing for the quarry ... pipelines and supertankers carrying the object of the hunt to market ... where finally, of course, the prize could be burned: in engines, all kinds of fascinating engines."

This is the romantic bond that links Bush the Texas oilman with Saudi sheiks and Russia's Putin. This is the game that holds them rapt in Central Asia. And this is the romance with power that hypnotizes American consumers as they mount their Excursions and Expeditions. It's the same spirit that lured Marco Polo east and Cortez west. And it is the same industrial spirit that lured us to construct the greatest ocean liner ever, and to sail it too fast through a sea filled with icebergs.

No modern event better evokes the blind overconfidence of industrial society than the sinking of the Titanic. There may also be no better metaphor for America's resolute denial of climate change.

We're mesmerized by the Titanic story like children transfixed by fairy tales that end with little boys and girls devoured by wolves: The greatest ship ever built, conceived as unsinkable, opulent beyond imagining, sails with its millionaire and immigrant passengers. The reckless owners demand the captain load on the coal to reach New York in record time, despite repeated iceberg warnings.

The berg finally spotted, the big ship can't react fast enough, can't turn its Titanic mass on its too flimsy rudder. As the Titanic sinks, the wealthy still dance in the Grand Ballroom, not believing the news. Lack of preparedness dooms too many. Only half the lifeboats needed are aboard. About 1,500 passengers die. The survivors, rich and poor alike, are torn from comfort and carried in open boats upon a cruel sea. Nature humbles civilization's rebellious and arrogant angels.

The metaphorical parallels with climate change are too obvious: Just like the Titanic skipper and the captains of industry, our government and corporations pour on the steam, ignoring dire warnings. And we the people are largely complicit.

The most powerful comparison may be the tragic inability of that magnificent ship to get out of its own way. Our fossil-fuel driven juggernaut seems similarly possessed of a weak rudder. Scientists caution that we must reduce fossil-fuel burning now, must curb the current warming trend now, or else our momentum could carry us beyond an unseen climate-change threshold -- to a rendezvous with a sea of dark chaos we cannot yet clearly discern.

Back home in the Northeast, the dry spell drags on. A wet spring respite did little to end the long-term drought. Forecasts project below-normal rainfall into October. The West too is gripped by drought and its forests burn.

As I watch the blue sky, I worry my well may go dry. And I'm starting to feel a kinship with the Afghan farmer who looks into his arid heaven and slaughters a parched cow, or the Tuvalu islander who gauges a slowly rising sea.

While none of us can point to our situation and claim that the dark hand of climate change is responsible, in our hearts we may begin to guess that something has gone terribly wrong and that the time to act is now. While none of us has proof certain of the danger we are in, neither did Captain Smith who, holding a telegram in his hand telling him to slow down, sailed at full speed into an ocean full of ice.

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