Page 43 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Amory Lovins), involving massive and heroic efforts to terraform a planet or
geoengineer its basic physical or biophysical systems. Such literature usually
emphasizes words such as “mastery” or “domination.” That is, it plays out the
Baconian program involving fantasies of control. The comedic genre is well rep-
resented too, with stories that are both silly and funny. The overall effect is that
no single style dominates imaginative work on weather and climate control, and
some, akin to Woody Allen’s movie Melinda and Melinda (2004), explicitly
combine both tragedy and comedy.

Jules verne and the baltimore Gun Club

Jules Verne, the renowned French author of “scientific fiction,” wrote a notable
book in 1865, De la terre à la lune, known in English after 1873 as From the Earth
to the Moon. In the story, when the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club,
bemoaning the end of the Civil War, find themselves lacking any urgent assign-
ments, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a cannon
large enough to launch a projectile to the Moon. But when Barbicane’s adver-
sary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates
the mission to a “manned” flight, one man’s dream turns into an international
space race.
In a sequel, Sans Dessus Dessous, published in 1889 and appearing simultane-
ously in English as The Purchase of the North Pole, Verne revisits the possibilities
of big guns, but this time with a distinct skepticism for the wonders of technol-
ogy. For 2 cents an acre, a group of American investors acquires rights to the
vast, incredibly lucrative but seemingly inaccessible coal and mineral deposits
under the North Pole. To mine the region, they propose to melt the polar ice.
Initially, the project captures the public imagination, as the backers promise that
their scheme will improve the climate everywhere. They find it relatively easy to
convince the public of the idea that the tilt of the Earth’s axis should be elimi-
nated (shades of John Milton). This would remove the contrasts between sum-
mer and winter, reduce the extreme stresses of heat and cold, improve health,
calm the power of storms, and make the Earth a terrestrial heaven, where every
day is mild and springlike. But public opinion shifts when it is revealed that the
investors—members of the Baltimore Gun Club, the very same group who shot
the projectile to the Moon—intend to shoot the Earth off its axis by building
and firing the world’s largest cannon. Initial public enthusiasm gives way to fears
that if these retired Civil War artillerymen (modern-day Titans) have their way
and build a kind of Archimedean lever, the tidal waves generated by the explo-

26 | StorieS of Control