The GALILEO Syndrome

On the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, humanity can no longer ignore Global Warming. Having inherited an ineffective bulwark against the changing climate, we stare at the beast of our making: The Greenhouse Laws. The malevolent bastard child of Kyoto, the Greenhouse Laws limit energy usage, transportation, heat, refrigeration, and clean water. It reduces communication to a trickle and requires every citizen to report monthly energy usage. Non-approved energy consuming activity by the population has become illegal. Of course there are always "Privileges". Carlos Jordan is seventeen when the Greenhouse Laws are enacted. For his generation the payments are due for climate change. The children of the new millennium, see their first installment--the Greenhouse Laws--as acceptable. The second payment is not. They are faced with the winnowing away of civilization and our species. We follow Carlos into adulthood amid the social migration and chaos of rabid storms, rising seas, rampant disease, and a breakdown of infrastructure. Yet where there is courage, there is hope.