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Chapter 87: An Investment in Survival

The grim diagnosis of the "Feel-Good Fallacy" had left the war room in a state of sober contemplation. Julian had systematically dismantled the comforting illusions that underpinned modern environmentalism. Now, he had to offer a real solution.

He did so the next day, in a major address at a national scientific conference. He stood before an audience of the nation’s top ecologists, biologists, and climate scientists.

“Yesterday, in a private conversation,” he began, “I argued that our current approach to the environmental crisis is like trying to bail out a sinking aircraft carrier with a teacup. Today, I am here to propose a bucket.” He paused. “A very, very big bucket.”

“I am proposing,” he declared, his voice calm but the words a political thunderclap, “that our nation make a binding, permanent, generational commitment to dedicate two percent of our Gross Domestic Product, every single year, to the preservation and restoration of the natural world.”

A wave of shocked, disbelieving murmurs went through the hall of seasoned, cynical scientists. Two percent of GDP was a number of almost unimaginable scale. It was hundreds of billions of dollars a year. It was a figure on par with national defense spending.

“Let me be clear,” Julian said, cutting through the noise. “This is not a ‘cost.’ This is not an act of charity. This is a non-negotiable investment in our own survival. We spend more than three percent of our GDP on a military to protect us from theoretical future threats from other nations. But the collapse of our planet’s biosphere is not a theoretical threat. It is a present, ongoing, and existential crisis. What is the point of having the world’s most advanced military if the world it is designed to defend is no longer capable of supporting human life?”

He then stripped the issue of all its usual sentimentality. “And this is not about protecting cute and cuddly animals. It is not about saving the whales because we like to attribute some human intelligence to them. This is not about the moral preferences of vegetarians who wish to protect individual animals. This is about protecting species. It is an unsentimental, scientific, and systemic commitment to preserving the complex biological architecture upon which our own food supply, our clean water, and our stable climate depend. It is about us.”

He then laid out the broad strokes of the blueprint, a new and smarter kind of conservation.

“The vast majority of this investment,” he explained, “will go towards the most effective tool we have: the strategic acquisition of land. We will buy up massive tracts of farmland from willing sellers, providing them with a fair price and a dignified retirement. We will acquire forests from logging companies. We will restore the wetlands that we have so foolishly drained.”

“But,” he added, “we will not just create isolated ‘islands’ of nature. The science is clear. A series of small, disconnected parks is a recipe for inbreeding and eventual extinction. We must build a truly resilient network. We will use a portion of these funds to build the green corridors, the tunnels under our highways, and the bridges over them, that will reconnect our wild spaces and allow for the natural, necessary migration of species in a changing climate.”

He then turned his gaze outward, delivering a sharp critique of international hypocrisy. “And this plan will begin at home. For too long, we have engaged in a form of conservation colonialism. Wealthy nations like Canada righteously condemn Brazil for the Amazon, while clear-cutting their own irreplaceable old-growth forests. France champions the protection of distant oceans, while failing to protect its own overfished waters. We will lead not by lecturing, but by example. We will build the most ambitious and well-funded conservation project on Earth, right here.”

He concluded with a new vision for what a protected area could be. “And we will reject the old, bureaucratic metric of just protecting a certain percentage of land. Quantity is not quality. We will focus on protecting the most fertile and biodiverse lands, not just useless tracts of rock and ice. And we will design these new wild spaces for dual use. With the exception of certain, sensitive breeding grounds, these will be public lands, open for hiking, for camping, for our children to experience the wonder of the natural world. To build the public will necessary for this project, we must ensure that the public has a stake in its success.”

The speech was over. Julian had proposed the single largest and most ambitious environmental project in human history. Back in the war room, Marcus Thorne was staring at the projected budget numbers, his face pale.

“Two percent of GDP,” Marcus whispered, his voice full of a horrified awe. “Do you have any idea how much that is? The opposition will call you a lunatic.”

Anya Sharma, however, was looking at a different set of numbers on her own screen—the projected economic cost of ecosystem collapse, of crop failures, of climate-related disasters.

“No, Marcus,” she said, her voice quiet but certain. “It’s the only sane number on the board.”

Julian looked at them both, the pragmatist and the idealist, the two poles of his own mind. “Then we will fight for it together,” he said.

The Discourse, 87; The Unsentimental Ark

Section 87.1: The "2% Mandate" as a "Moonshot" Project

Julian Corbin's proposal to dedicate 2% of GDP to biodiversity is a modern-day "moonshot" project. Like Kennedy's call to go to the moon, it is a proposal of audacious scale, designed to capture the national imagination and to mobilize the nation's resources towards a single, great, and seemingly impossible goal.

The framing of this massive expenditure as an "investment in survival" is a crucial piece of rhetoric. It deliberately echoes the language of national defense spending. The argument is that the collapse of the biosphere is an existential threat on par with, or even greater than, a traditional military adversary. By comparing the 2% figure to defense spending, he is re-framing conservation not as a "soft" or "luxury" issue, but as a core component of national security.

Section 87.2: The Unsentimental Logic of Biodiversity

The speech is a masterclass in stripping a politically charged issue of its sentimentality and grounding it in a cold, logical, and systemic analysis. Corbin explicitly rejects the common tropes of the environmental movement.

• He rejects anthropomorphism: His dismissal of the focus on "cute and cuddly" animals is a direct critique of a conservation movement that often relies on emotional appeals for fundraising. His argument that a "cow is just as interesting as a whale" is a statement of pure ecological principle: every species has a role in the system.

• He rejects individualism: His distinction between protecting individual animals (the focus of animal rights movements) and protecting species is a core concept from conservation biology. His goal is not to prevent the suffering of any single animal, but to preserve the long-term viability of the genetic code and the ecological niche of a species. This is an unsentimental, scientific, and system-level view.

By using this language, he is positioning himself not as a traditional environmentalist, but as a planetary systems engineer.

Section 87.3: A New, Smarter Conservation Model

The specific policy proposals represent a "MARG" approach to conservation, one that is data-driven and focused on systemic solutions over symbolic gestures.

• Connectivity is Key: The focus on green corridors, tunnels, and bridges is a direct application of modern ecological science. Scientists now understand that a series of small, isolated "island" parks is far less effective than a network of interconnected habitats that allows for genetic flow and migration.

• Quality over Quantity: The critique of the simple "percentage of protected land" metric is a sophisticated one. It argues against the bureaucratic tendency to protect vast tracts of useless, "rock and ice" land to meet a quota, and instead advocates for the strategic protection of smaller, but more fertile and biodiverse, areas.

• Public Buy-In: The emphasis on dual-use lands and public access is a crucial piece of political science. He understands that a conservation effort that is seen as "locking away" land from the people will inevitably face a political backlash. By integrating human enjoyment into the plan, he is attempting to create a broad, self-interested constituency for conservation.

Section 87.4: The Critique of "Conservation Colonialism"

Corbin's critique of the hypocrisy of other Western nations (Canada, France) is a sharp and politically savvy move. It is an implicit critique of what is sometimes called "conservation colonialism"—the tendency of wealthy nations to preach environmentalism to the developing world (e.g., "save the Amazon") while continuing to destroy their own remaining natural habitats.

By stating that "his plan begins at home," he is seizing the moral high ground. He is making the case that America will lead not by lecturing, but by example. This is a powerful, patriotic, and authentic message that is designed to appeal to a sense of national pride and to insulate him from attacks that his plan is part of a "globalist agenda."