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As summer in 2035 approaches, an unrelenting heatwave settles over New York City and west to Lake Erie and south into parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many in the big city without the means to cope escape into the relatively cool hills of the Berkshires just as high season is coming on, and with a tight housing market, there’s little room for the hordes.
2035 sees battles over climate policy and new legislation continue, as does the march upward of average global temperatures. In the courts, finally, there are some very real legal threats to the fossil fuel industry still fighting for its future against the advancement of renewable energy. Addressing climate change remains something of one step forward-two step sideways jig.
Davin has been busy in his Housatonic studio and has sculptures in galleries in the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley. His finances are modestly stable. His solar/batteries and VPP membership keeps electricity bills down. His three house sharers help with the Housatonic House on the Hill expenses. Marsha’s been there nearly a decade, and she’s queen of the big vegetable garden. Charlie is a more recent house sharer, but a nigh-on perfect one, since he’s often away on business or holed up in his third-floor bedroom working. The newest house sharer is Bee, a ceramic artist who helps Davin out with the first floor Airbnb apartment and who has just claimed a corner of the studio and could easily claim his heart if he isn’t careful.
But as summer approaches, the unrelenting heatwave settles over New York City and west to Lake Erie and south into parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Many in the big city without the means to cope escape into the relatively cool hills of the Berkshires just as high season is coming on, and with a tight housing market, there’s little room for the hordes. Young Brooklyn hipsters take up camping in the woods around Monument Mountain Reservation and along the Appalachian Trail, or double and triple up at the summer homes of friends’ parents, or anywhere, really, somewhere, to sleep. Many in the town aren’t happy with the spike in petty crimes, and it’s up to Marian Gray-Fletcher, Great Barrington’s town manager, to solve the problem. But she’s distracted with her own philandering husband, until a drug-gang killing focuses her attention.
The international news is full of climate migration stories and political problems in Europe and an escalating conflict between India and Pakistan. Central and South American climate change-induced droughts make for huge numbers of people heading north. The southern border is militarized and running battles between cartels and U.S. forces are in the headlines. And then there’s No One is Safe, a climate terrorist organization that has a history of blowing up refineries and pipelines and the occasional oil exec, and one of them finds himself wondering how deep the NOS-cartels connection goes.