The whole East Coast from Boston to Washington was one sprawling, aging megalopolis. A spectacular, dysfunctional mess of regional regulators, profit-crazy power companies, obstreperous, crooked city councils, and snooty, never-in-my-backyard environmental activists. Every Greenhouse Summer since 1999 had sent New York temperatures creeping a degree or two higher. So everybody wanted electricity - because the choice was AC or heatstroke.

It was a vicious downward spiral: more heat, more power from the coal plants; more coal smoke, more Greenhouse heat. New York was a basket case, all band-aids on hemorrhaging wounds. Electric power, steam lines, gas lines, data - the city's vital systems were in lethal proximity, jammed into tight little metal conduits, like linear grenades running into the bowels of each and every building.