B'More Green: Local author tries fiction to make climate change real

The result is a slim, 154-page nightmarish tale set 25 years from now, with drought, wildfires, rising sea level and civil unrest plaguing the nation. The story focuses on three main characters: an uprooted Midwestern farmer, a New York scientist with ties to radical environmental groups, and a White House aide whose father was a Maryland waterman, put out of work by a catastrophic hurricane.

Stein says he did “a fair amount of research” on which to base his depiction of how climate change is expected to alter weather patterns, agriculture and the like.
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For some details, Stein admits, he extrapolated, or went out on a limb. Oil prices hit $500 per barrel in the story, for instance, which might seem high enough to destroy the economy and society as we know it. But Stein says petroleum had climbed past $100 a barrel when he started writing the book, so he didn’t think it implausible it could keep going up.