The morning had started with the sort of optimism that generally accompanies men who have purchased expensive fishing equipment and have not yet attempted to use it.
Early spring had arrived in Norway, although nobody had informed the mountains. Snow still filled the gullies above the fjord, and a cool breeze came down through the valley, lifting little white crests on the dark water. The sun was out, making everything look considerably warmer than it was.
Mitch had borrowed his brother-in-law’s boat, an elderly blue contraption with a small cabin, a temperamental engine and a depth sounder that occasionally identified the seabed as a school of fish. They had left the harbour just after seven, carrying sandwiches, coffee and sufficient equipment to threaten the Norwegian fishing industry.
Tony stood at the stern examining a lure that had cost him three hundred kroner.
“Apparently this one’s irresistible.”
“To fish?” asked Marcin.
Adam was sitting on a cooler, holding a coffee that had gone cold before they left the harbour.
“It’s Japanese,” said Tony. “Articulated body, internal weighting, specially calibrated vibrations. Supposed to imitate an injured baitfish.”
He cast out, narrowly missing Greg, who was trying to untangle two fishing lines.
“Watch it, you bastard. I’ve already got enough hooks in me without you adding another one.”
Greg pulled at the lines. A sinker swung free and struck him on the knee.
“Fuck!”
Mitch looked over from the wheel.
“Don’t cut that, it’s expensive.”
Tony began reeling in.
“I’ve been reading The Wizard and the Prophet. Charles Mann. Interesting book about two scientists with completely different ideas about how humanity’s going to survive.”
“Does either one catch fish?” asked Greg.
“No… well maybe, doesn’t really go into it. One of them thinks technology can overcome ecological constraints, the other thinks humanity needs to live within them. Green Revolution against limits to growth. Innovation against restraint.”
“Seems a fairly obvious argument,” said Adam. “If you’re running out of something, you either find more of it, use less of it, or work out how to do without it. Can’t imagine you need a whole book.”
“This f*cker Borlaug helped feed millions of people by increasing agricultural productivity, a modern day Jesus! The other bloke just went around shouting that population and consumption would eventually overwhelm the ecological systems supporting them. Both perfectly reasonable positions, but the interesting thing is how they end up as the posters boys for opposite sides of nearly every environmental argument we’ve had since.”
“Because everybody likes having a side,” said Marcin. “You get to be right without having to do very much. Pick your team, find a few facts, ignore the inconvenient ones and spend the rest of your life complaining that the other bastards don’t understand anything. Feel good about yourself at least!”
Mitch eased the throttle and moved them towards deeper water. The boat rolled through a short patch of chop, sending Greg stumbling against the cabin.
Tony held up his rod.
“The basic disagreement is whether we should rely on innovation to save us all or exercise restraint so we don’t need saving. Technology versus nature, growth versus conservation, individual initiative versus collective responsibility. And before long it’s right against left, which means nobody’s listening anymore…”
Marcin leaned against the cabin door.
“There’s a deeper problem. The Prophet mistakes the existing configuration for the limit of possibility. The Wizard mistakes unlimited possibility for unlimited configuration.”
Greg looked up from his fishing line.
“Can you say that in Australian?”
“The Prophet assumes that because we’re approaching the limits of how something currently works, we’re approaching the limits of what could ever work. The Wizard sees that new possibilities emerge and assumes there’s no practical limit to how things can be organised. Both are looking at the same world, but neither is particularly good at distinguishing what’s possible from what’s actually sustainable.”
“That’s because they’ve already decided what the problem is,” said Adam. “If you tell someone the problem is climate change, they start thinking about emissions or fake news. Tell them it’s energy security and they start thinking about power stations or shale oil or bombing Arabs. Tell them it’s economic development and they’ll start building f*cking chips and databases from foodstuffs in order make ones and zeros with a promise these’ll somehow start feeding to people they’ve just pushed further into impoverishment.”
“Mate, I own shares in bitcoin and datacentre, are you saying I am getting rich by robbing the earth? S’pose that’s why you have to look at consequences rather than decide beforehand who is on first.”
Tony changed the position of his rod.
“Except there’s a rather obvious problem with that. Consequences for whom? Borlaug’s agricultural revolution produced an enormous amount of food. That’s a pretty spectacular achievement if you’re starving. If you’re concerned about groundwater depletion, fertiliser runoff or the loss of biological diversity, you might see things differently. So what are we measuring?”
“Exactly,” said Marcin. “Perspective dominates the whole bloody discussion. Both men are arguing about the future of human civilisation, and neither particularly questions whether the civilisation they’re trying to preserve is itself a glitch in spacetime.”
“Well, everything’s temporary,” said Adam. “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look after it. My grandfather’s house was temporary, but we still fixed the roof when it leaked.”
“Of course. I’m not suggesting we let the roof fall in. I’m saying that preserving the house isn’t necessarily the only objective. You might want to rebuild it, move somewhere else, or knock the bloody thing down.”
“Depends who’s paying for the roof,” said Greg, who had finally freed his line.
The boat drifted slowly towards a patch of darker water. Mitch checked the depth sounder, adjusted the throttle and cut the engine. The sudden quiet left only the slap of water against the hull and the occasional cry of gulls overhead.
A large splash broke the silence.
About a hundred metres away, a dark back rolled through the surface. A white cloud of breath hung briefly above the water before the breeze carried it away.
“Whale,” said Mitch.
Another surfaced further out, followed by a third. They moved slowly across the mouth of the fjord, their dark bodies appearing and disappearing beneath the sunlight.
“Beautiful,” said Adam.
“Minke, probably,” said Mitch.
Greg watched one roll beneath the water.
“Ever eaten one?”
“Of course, a little bit livery, mind you, if they’d tasted better they probably wouldn’t be here anymore.”
Tony turned towards him.
“You’re watching one of the most extraordinary creatures on the planet and thinking about eating it?”
“You’re holding a fishing rod.”
“That’s not the same thing. Whales are extraordinary animals. They’re intelligent, social, some of them communicate across enormous distances. There’s something fundamentally different about shooting a whale compared with catching a cow.”
“Perspective and good acoustics,” said Mitch. “I don’t really see why being intelligent should necessarily keep you off the menu. Pigs are pretty clever. Nobody seems terribly worried about them ‘cept Islam and the Jews.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Greg. “I’m very concerned, particularly the price of bacon.”
The whales surfaced again, one rolled slowly through the water, its long dark back visible for several seconds before disappearing.
“There’s something quite incredible about seeing them out here,” said Tony. “You spend your whole life looking at pictures of whales, watching documentaries, listening to people talk about how important they are, and then one just appears beside your boat.”
“Seen hundreds,” said Mitch. “Still nice.”
“Ever thought about how odd it is that you can admire something like that and then go home and eat it?”
“Not particularly. My grandfather ate whale, my father ate whale. It’s food. People used to get pretty hungry up here in the winter, even ate tree bread.”
Greg watched the water.
“Wonder what the herring think of all this. Couple of enormous monster out there eating their relatives, and we’re sitting here discussing how magnificent they are.”
“Whales have to eat,” said Tony.
“So do I.” He opened the cooler.
A patch of sunlight spread across the fjord beneath the mountains. The whales had moved further offshore, following a disturbance in the water where gulls were diving for baitfish.
Adam leaned back against the rail.
“That’s pretty much the problem with treating nature as though it’s got a particular interest in being preserved. We’re watching the whales and thinking about how wonderful they are. The herring are probably having a considerably worse morning.”
“Nature doesn’t have an objective,” said Marcin. “We do. That’s what makes all this environmental policy crapp so difficult. Everybody talks about protecting nature, but what they usually mean is protecting the particular bits of nature they happen to like, in a configuration they happen to recognise.”
“Or saw on Disney, did you know free Willy was here a few years ago, c*nt couldn’t adjust to being a whale again” said Tony. “There’s good scientific evidence for why maintaining biodiversity matters. Entire ecosystems depend on relationships that we barely understand. It’s not simply a question of preferring whales to herring.”
“Wasn’t he a shark?” snapped Adam.
Mitch picked up his rod.
“Forty metres here. Might be some decent fish along the bottom but biodiversity isn’t a fixed arrangement either. Species arrive, disappear, evolve, compete. An ecosystem isn’t a museum.”
They dropped their lines.
For a while the conversation gave way to the more immediate business of catching dinner. Greg lost his bait, Tony hooked the bottom, and Adam caught a cod scarcely longer than his hand.
“Undersized,” said Mitch. “Back it goes.”
Adam carefully removed the hook and returned the fish to the water. It hovered briefly beneath the surface before disappearing.
Tony was still pulling at his line. “Gunna have to break it off, it’s me good lure as well.”
“The Japanese thing? You’d have been better off with a bottle of Yamazaki”
The wind had freshened, and the first darker clouds were moving down the fjord. Mitch started the engine and moved them towards a deeper channel beyond the headland.
“There’s something I’ve never understood about these environmental arguments. We can all see the same bloody things happening. Fish run out, forests get cut down, beaches wash away, fires get hotter, people build houses on floodplains, rivers flood, mountains erode. Some bloke reckons the problem is too many houses, another reckons it’s too many people, and another reckons there just aren’t enough fucking data centres yet,” Greg said, raising his voice against the wind.
“Because what you think is happening depends on what you’re looking at,” said Tony. “Take a new hydroelectric dam. Someone sees renewable electricity. Someone else sees a destroyed river. A third bloke sees jobs and investment, and somebody downstream wonders what happened to his f*cking river. They’re all looking at the same project, but they’ll fight for years over whose description is correct.”
“And they’re’ll f*cking right,” said Adam. He shifted on the cooler as the boat rolled beneath him. “The problem space is shared even when the problem definitions aren’t. We can disagree there is a f*cking great big arsed dam standing there.”
Greg pulled his collar up against the wind.
“Yeah, but that’s what gets me. It is like Blueyman in the US, no one seems able to agree what a c*nt looks like anymore, rape, embezzlement, wars, rambling, gambling, Blind Willie could’ve f*cking seen it. You don’t need to agree about whether the dam’s a good idea to know the river’s going to change.”
“Don’t need to be a wizard to know that is you put a f*ckwit rapist in charge and he’ll f*ck things up,” said Greg.
“It would be,” said Marcin, “if people didn’t insist on turning preferences into universal principles. The Wizard wants technology because he sees what innovation can achieve. The Prophet wants restraint because he sees what uncontrolled expansion can destroy. They could both be useful perspectives, but instead they become identities. Then half the effort goes into defending the identity rather than examining the consequences.”
“That’s politics,” said Mitch.
“A fair bit of economics too,” said Adam. “People build models around assumptions about rational behaviour, preferences, equilibrium, growth. Then the model becomes the thing you’re trying to maintain, regardless of whether the actual economy behaves anything like it.”
“Do it good enough, get a fake Nobel Prize?” asked Greg.
“We should print up some Swedish f*cking central bank prize t-shirts, be a few bob selling those at the next G20!” said Tony.
Marcin laughed and the boat rolled gently with him, as a small swell passed beneath it. A gull landed nearby, inspected the surface for a moment and took off again.
Tony reeled in his line, empty again. “You could turn the whole thing round, though. Instead of arguing about whether we need more technology or less consumption, why not ask which transformations increase the capacity of the system to sustain and develop?”
“Because some people don’t particularly like sustain an develop,” said Greg. “If you’re a psycho, old, miserable, redheaded c*nt you might be quite happy to see the whole arrangement fall apart.”
“Fair point,” said Tony.
“And I don’t see why you should have to explain to everybody else why you want to change it. Some things are just worth getting rid of cause they are not good.”
“Of course,” said Marcin. “You don’t have to preserve a particular configuration just because the majority think it is good. But whatever you do to change it has consequences for everything connected to it.”
Greg took another sandwich. “Pity I gave up smoking, would always get a bite when i lit up.”
A larger boat appeared around the headland, white with a dark-blue hull, an enclosed cabin and polished rails. Anna was at the wheel, with Isobel beside her and Kelly and Karen standing at the stern.
Greg shaded his eyes.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.”
Anna slowed and brought the boat alongside.
“Morning, boys. How’s the fishing?”
“Bit slow,” said Mitch.
“Caught anything?”
“A cod,” said Adam.
“Where is it?”
“Bit small.”
“Cold out eh.” Kelly disappeared into the cabin and returned carrying an enormous cod. She lifted it with some effort, the tail nearly touching the deck. “This is a cod.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Greg removed his sunglasses. “F*ck me.”
Karen leaned against the rail while Tony examined the fish. “What lure were you using?”
Kelly showed him a battered green jig with chipped paint and looked over their boat, taking in the tangled lines, damp sandwiches, loose ropes and empty coffee cups.
“Looks like you’ve had a productive morning.”
“Been discussing environmental philosophy,” said Adam. “Whether technology and environmental protection really are opposing approaches, or whether it’s just another artificial division we’ve invented to make life difficult.”
“Read the same book,” said Isobel. “I agree, the argument was a bit too neatly divided. People are quite capable of wanting technological innovation and ecological protection simultaneously.”
“Exactly,” said Marcin. “You don’t need everybody to agree on the objective. You need to recognise the consequences of acting within a shared system.”
Anna poured herself some coffee.
“That’s fine until somebody knows the consequences and doesn’t care. Which happens rather a lot. You can explain the effects of pollution to someone making a fortune from it, and he might understand perfectly well. Doesn’t mean he’ll stop making money from it.”
“Absolutely,” said Adam. “Talk about data centres and the world’s shittiest ranga already.”
A whale surfaced behind the women’s boat, its exhalation carrying clearly across the water. Kelly turned to watch it. “Wow, beautiful.”
“Done whales as well, Mitch eats them, wouldn’t touch dog meat though” said Greg.
Anna looked at Mitch. “Were are you on cats? You Australians are funny about whales. You’ll eat kangaroos, crocodiles and practically anything else that moves, but come to Norway and suddenly you’re all worried about marine mammals, too much f*cking Disney I reckon.”
“It’s not the same,” said Tony. “Whales are intelligent animals.”
“So are pigs,” said Karen. “More intelligent than some dogs, apparently. Doesn’t stop anyone eating bacon.”
“Did pigs as well”
The women began preparing to leave. Kelly secured the cod in a large insulated box, while Karen gathered the ropes.
“We’re heading back,” said Anna. “Weather’s turning, and there’s a pub near the harbour. We’ve got fish, we’re cold, and we’d quite like a beer. Can’t think of a compelling reason to stay.”
Anna eased the throttle forward, and the larger boat pulled away towards the harbour.
“Enjoy your sandwiches!” Kelly called from the stern.
The men watched until the boat disappeared around the headland.
Mitch checked the fuel gauge. Tony packed away his remaining tackle, while Greg searched through the cooler and found half a cheese sandwich that had become unpleasantly damp.
“Right,” he said. “Can we go?”
“Thought you wanted to catch fish,” said Mitch.
“I did. Three hours ago. Now I want to sit in a pub and drink beer and talk about catching fish.”
They headed towards the harbour, the boat climbing over the small swell waves at an uneven awkward idle.
