Old Poison by Joan Francis Page A

the hell do you think we got to be numero uno,
huh?”
    A man in the first row stood up and didn’t
wait for Nate to call on him. “You’re telling me the whole rest of
the world knows we’re headed for disaster, and the oil guys are
keeping it secret. Give me a break.”
    The noise level in the room rose several
decibels, and Nate had to lean into the mike and speak loudly.
“Please sit down, Harry. David, Sven, all of you, I’ll pay you each
one hundred dollars to do your own research. I’ll give a thousand
dollars to anyone who can prove that global warming is not a real
threat to our country, our company bottom line, and, our jobs,
yours and mine.”
    Their jobs! Maybe I was wrong about Nate’s
persuasive abilities. One of Nixon’s aides was supposed to have a
cartoon on his wall that said something on the order of, “If you
have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
    Nate continued to talk over the audience
clamor. “No, I’ll make that five thousand to anyone who can prove
global warming is not a threat.”
    Carrot and stick, now he at least had their
attention. They quieted. “Many of your offices have already
suffered tremendous losses due to extreme weather events. In the
last twenty years we have witnessed the worst floods, fires,
hurricanes, and tornados ever recorded by man.” He paused, then
with a very charming, little boy grin, added, “Well, unless you
count the flood reported by Noah.”
    That won him a laugh and lessened the
tensions in the room. “In the last twenty years of the twentieth
century, our industry paid for damages in forty-two weather-related
disasters that cost over one billion dollars each. Thirty-six of
these events occurred between 1988 and 1999, costing us one hundred
and seventy billion dollars. In May of 1999 we had a single tornado
event that spawned more than seventy-five tornadoes. One of them
was more than a half a mile across and stayed on the ground for
four hours. And it didn’t just blow Dorothy over the rainbow.
Fifty-four people died. Over ten thousand homes and businesses were
damaged or destroyed. You beginning to see a pattern here?
    You could hear a pin drop. No one even
coughed.
    Now look at the tables in your conference
packets and follow that pattern into the twenty-first century and
notice our company losses. I am sorry to tell you the evidence
suggests this is only the beginning. As global warming increases,
so will extreme weather disasters. How much can our company, or any
insurance company, take before we go bankrupt? What good can we do
for our employees or our insured if we’re broke?”
    A neatly dressed woman in the first row
raised her hand. Nate said, “Yes, Kay?”
    I was beginning to see a pattern here, and
it wasn’t just a weather pattern. So far everyone Nate spoke to he
knew by sight and name. Did he know all his regional managers that
well? If so, Clara Shimmerhorn was in deep trouble.
    Kay rose and said, “Okay, so say we accept
global warming, but you said it was warming at an alarming rate,
and you also said it had only gone up one degree in the last
hundred years. In Tucson our temperature can change forty degrees
from noon to midnight. I can’t see why one degree would make that
much difference.”
    That gave the audience a small laugh, and
Nate smiled. “I can understand why that is confusing, but the thing
is, we aren’t talking about just a local temperature, we’re talking
about a world average or mean temperature. To put it in
perspective, you know about the ice ages when much of Europe and
the U.S. were covered by glaciers?”
    Kay nodded.
    “Do you know how much the world mean
temperature had to drop to start an ice age? Four degrees
centigrade. Just four degrees. Some scientists are now predicting
an increase of three degrees. Some are predicting even more. If the
mean temperature rises by even the most conservative estimate of
three degrees, the effects will be disastrous worldwide.”
    He