Sweet Fortune

approaching.
    Jessie leaned forward to study the film more closely. Dr. Edwin Bright appeared to be in his late forties and there was no denying the camera loved him. He looked very, very good on film.
    He was a striking individual with rugged features, closely cut brown hair, and vivid blue eyes. A pair of steel-framed aviator-style glasses gave him an air of serious intelligence coupled with a bold, decisive, almost military look. When he finally turned toward the camera, his eyes met the lens unflinchingly, as if he could see past it to the audience. The vivid intensity of his gaze was mesmerizing. Jessie remembered what David had reported about the man being extremely charismatic.
    “Looks like one of those characters on television who will offer to save your soul if you'll just send him the contents of your bank account,” Hatch muttered.
    “Shush. I told you, Rick or Sherry will hear you.”
    Dr. Bright agrees with his fellow scientists on many points. However, he has run his own computer forecasts based on his own calculations. He has simulated climatological events over the next fifty years. There is little doubt that environmental disaster is inevitable. Dr. Bright's estimate of the timing of this disaster differs from many in the scientific community .
    According to Bright's carefully constructed programs and calculations, that disaster will overtake us much sooner than most people predict. It will very likely strike within the next ten to fifteen years .
    Edwin Bright also disagrees with his associates in the scientific community and with the radical environmentalists on the subject of how to survive this disaster .
    Edwin Bright looked straight into the camera and spoke for the first time. His voice was rich, measured and imbued with almost hypnotic intensity:
    It is technology that got us into this environmental mess , Bright said grimly, “ and it is technology that will save us. I'm afraid it is far too late to employ conservation measures, in spite of what the liberal extremists tell us. Switching from plastic to paper bags at the supermarket is like trying to plug a leak in a dam with a Band-Aid. In any event, we cannot go back to some primitive time before the invention of electricity or antibiotics. To do so would be to deny the very thing that makes us human, the very thing that can save us, namely our intelligence. Such a retreat into the past is unthinkable. It is, to put it bluntly, too late to return to that world of early death and periodic famine that our ancestors endured. We do not have enough time to reverse our economy or change our life-styles drastically enough to forestall the cataclysm .
    Jessie glanced down at the cup in her hand. “I guess that philosophy explains the plastic. Why bother trying to recycle when the damage has already been done and there's no time left to clean it up anyway?”
    “Convenient sort of theory,” Hatch murmured. “Bound to appeal to a lot of people. Lets 'em have their cake and eat it too.”
    But there is hope , Edwin Bright continued in a strong, reassuring voice. And that hope lies with the work of the Dawn's Early Light Foundation. Here at DEL we are attacking the problem the way real Americans have always attacked their problems: with the power of modern science and technology and with good old American-style know-how. My friends, we are making great progress. With your help, we can continue our important work. But time is short. I urge you to give what you can now, today, to the cause. Without your support, we can do little. With it, we can save the world .
    The narrator took over once more as the camera went high for an aerial shot of the island:
    You may be surprised to know that much of the technology needed to save our world already exists. Part of the work of the DEL Foundation is to correlate data on that existing technology and find ways of employing it effectively. We cannot wait for the world governments to do this. They are too bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy. Only private enterprise has the ability to react to this kind of crisis. Farsighted Americans believe in private enterprise and they support it because they know it works. We hope you will help us .
    Jessie listened to the rest of the filmed lecture and realized ruefully that she wanted to believe that somehow DEL really could save the world with existing technology. It was reassuring and inspiring to think that the tools were already available and all it took was a