About a hundred years from now, pollution, overpopulation, and ecological disasters have left the rich nations still rich, and the poor nations--the Lands of the Lost--slowly strangling in drought and pollution. New York City is below sea level, surrounded by a seawall. The climate in Paris is much like the twentieth-century climate of long-drowned New Orleans. And Siberia, Golden Siberia, is the crop-land of the world.

Still, for the international corporations and businesses who make a profit on technofixing the environment--the Big Blue Machine--it is business as usual: sell what you can where you can whenever you can. It is better to be rich. But it all may be coming to a terrible end: a scientist has predicted Condition Venus, the sudden greenhouse downfall of the entire planet--but she can't say when.

So now the attention of the world is focused for a week on a UN conference on the Environment in Paris, where all hell is about to break loose.