Beckbessinger, Sam. Undercurrency

Sam Beckbessinger, 'Undercurrency' (2021).

Part of a whole collection of financial futures. The story relates to a futuristic biofuel kelp farm pilot, located beyond the shallows with the help of drones that drag the kelp up to soak up the sun in the day, down to the sea bed to soak up nutrients in the night. In this new environment, a new subspecies of giant sea snail is thriving. The story explores the economics of environmental management, and in particular conflicts between decarbonisation and preserving biodiversity.

She believes in the market. How its invisible hand can solve the most complex problems, as long as everything has been priced in. Carbon tax treaties. Pollution fines. The costs your business doesn’t have to bear, the benefits they didn’t have to pay for. Her economics professor back in business school called them “externalities”. Her Ouma used to call it “leaving your mess for the fairies to pick up”.

Wole Talabi comments:

A brilliant story focused on climate change, energy transition and sustainable investment, “Undercurrency” follows a South African woman’s attempt to build her company, growing underwater kelp for biofuel on the coast while falling in love and learning about the complexity of doing the right thing in a world of complex and competing drivers. The voice in the story is strong, the description of the romance, while quick, feels natural and the descriptions of the science and the diving are vivid, accurate and wonderful. Full disclosure: I am an engineer in the energy industry and an avid diver, therefore naturally biased or as we say in Nigeria, I am the story’s target market. Consider me sold. Highly Recommended.

The choice of a giant sea snail offers a faint echo of the landmark snail darter conservation case of the 1970s. The Endangered Species Act is an intriguing mix of anthropocentric and ecocentric motivations. Kaitlin Bakken suggests: "If it were not for the human interest in protecting the land, the snail darter fish would not have been considered. [...] Conversely, where human interests are superior, wildlife species are generally unprotected."

The story is able to wrap up quickly and satisfyingly (in a way) with carbon credits as the deus ex machina. Instead of harvesting the kelp as biofuel, the fields are sold to the fossil fuel industry to offset carbon emissions. It works narratively, but it relies on a catastrophically rosy picture of how carbon credit trading has worked in practice.

“Prop up the oil companies?”

“That’s one way to see it.”

That is pretty much the correct way to see it.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. New York 2140

Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140 (2017).

This novel deals extensively with economic themes, particularly finance and the relationship between environment and economy. Here's an excerpt from the opening pages:

    [...] “This I know. It’s why we live in a tent on a roof.”
    “Right, and now people are even worried about food.”
    “As they should. That’s the real value, food in your belly. Because you can’t eat money.”
    “That’s what I’m saying!”
    “I thought you said the real value was code. Something a coder would say, may I point out.”
    “Mutt, hang with me. Follow what I’m saying. We live in a world where people pretend money can buy you anything, so money becomes the point, so we all work for money. Money is thought of as value.”
    “Okay, I get that. We’re broke and I get that.”
    “So good, keep hanging with me. We live by buying things with money, in a market that sets all the prices.”
    “The invisible hand.”
    “Right. Sellers offer stuff, buyers buy it, and in the flux of supply and demand the price gets determined. It’s crowdsourced, it’s democratic, it’s capitalism, it’s the market.”
    “It’s the way of the world.”
    “Right. And it’s always, always wrong.”
    “What do you mean wrong?”
    “The prices are always too low, and so the world is fucked. We’re in a mass extinction event, sea level rise, climate change, food panics, everything you’re not reading in the news.”
    “All because of the market.”
    “Exactly! It’s not just that there are market failures. It’s that the market is a failure.”
    “How so?”
    “Things are sold for less than it costs to make them.”
    “That sounds like the road to bankruptcy.”
    “Yes, and lots of businesses do go bankrupt. But the ones that don’t haven’t actually sold their thing for more than it cost to make. They’ve just ignored some of their costs. They’re under huge pressure to sell as low as they can, because every buyer buys the cheapest version of whatever it is. So they shove some of their production costs off their books.”
    “Can’t they just pay their labor less?”
    “They already did that! That was easy. That’s why we’re all broke except the plutocrats.”
    “I always see the Disney dog when you say that.”
    “They’ve squeezed us till we’re bleeding from the eyes. I can’t stand it anymore.”

From Paul Kincaid's review in Interzone #270:

Robinson is at pains to make clear that capitalism itself is to blame for the environmental failures. But capitalism is remarkably resilient: even among the ashes, the hedge funds make money. The intertidal zone, that flooded portion of Manhattan where tower blocks like the old Metropolitan Life building on Madison Square now house thousands of people in their own little islands, is disputed territory, its legal status now unknown. But life here has settled down since the last pulse, which means it is ripe for the money men to move in. One of Robinson’s characters has even devised an index that records the tidal movement of populations, the collapse of old towers, that provides a guide for hedge funds on when to invest, when to sell.

New York 2140 entry at ISFDB.