Freedom полностью

“MTR is mountaintop removal,” Lalitha said.

“The New York Times gives Bush-Cheney a total free pass on Iraq but keeps running these fucking editorials about the evils of MTR,” Walter said. “Nobody state, federal, or private wants to touch a project that involves sacrificing mountain ridges and displacing poor families from their ancestral homes. They don’t want to hear about forest reclamation, they don’t want to hear about sustainable green jobs. Wyoming County is very, very empty—the total number of families directly impacted by our plan is less than two hundred. But the whole thing gets turned into evil corporations versus the helpless common man.”

“It is so stupid and unreasonable,” Lalitha said. “They won’t even listen to Walter. He has really good news about reclamation, but people just close their ears when we walk into a room.”

“There’s this thing called the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative,” Walter said. “Are you at all interested in the details?”

“I’m interested in watching the two of you talk about them,” Katz said.

“Well, very briefly, what’s given MTR such a bad name is that most surface-rights owners don’t insist on the right sort of reclamation. Before a coal company can exercise its mineral rights and tear down a mountain, it has to put up a bond that doesn’t get refunded until the land’s been restored. And the problem is, these owners keep settling for these barren, flat, subsidence-prone pastures, in the hope that some developer will come along and build luxury condos on them, in spite of their being in the middle of nowhere. The fact is, you can actually get a very lush and biodiverse forest if you do the reclamation right. Use four feet of topsoil and weathered sandstone instead of the usual eighteen inches. Take care not to compact the soil too much. And then plant the right mixture of fast- and slow-growing tree species in the right season. We’ve got evidence that forests like that might actually be better for warbler families than the second-growth forests they replace. So our plan isn’t just about preserving the warbler, it’s about creating an advertisement for doing things right. But the environmental mainstream doesn’t want to talk about doing things right, because doing things right would make the coal companies look less villainous and MTR more palatable politically. And so we couldn’t get any outside money, and we’ve got public opinion trending against us.”

“But the problem with going it alone,” Lalitha said, “was that we were either looking at a much smaller park, too small to be a stronghold for the warbler, or at making too many concessions to the coal companies.”

“Which really are somewhat evil,” Walter said.

“And so we couldn’t ask too many questions about Mr. Haven’s money.”

“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” Katz said. “If I were a billionaire, I’d be taking out my checkbook right now.”

“There’s even worse, though,” Lalitha said, her eyes strangely glittering.

“Are you bored yet?” Walter said.

“Not at all,” Katz said. “I’m frankly a little starved for intellectual stimulus.”

“Well, the problem is, unfortunately, that Vin has turned out to have some other motives.”

“Rich people are like little babies,” Lalitha said. “Fucking little babies.”

“Say that again,” Katz said.

“Say what?”

“Fucking. I like the way you pronounce it.”

She blushed; Mr. Katz had gotten through to her.

“Fucking, fucking, fucking,” she said happily, for him. “I used to work at the Conservancy, and when we’d have our annual gala, the rich people were happy to buy a table for twenty thousand dollars, but only if they got their gift bag at the end of the night. The gift bags were full of worthless garbage donated by somebody else. But if they didn’t get their gift bags, they wouldn’t donate twenty thousand again the next year.”

“I need your assurance,” Walter said to Katz, “that you won’t mention any of this to anybody else.”

“So assured.”