A long time ago 3 top science fiction authors ("hard" science fiction authors, what I call "real" science fiction writers) wrote a book challenging the Green religion (among many other sacred cows).

In the story, the "climate scientists" who predicted global warming were wrong. Just as we were rejecting technology in order to save the planet from overheating... the next ice age hit.

Before that happened (remember, this was written like a quarter century ago), dedicated people managed to cobble together a habitat out of shuttle fuel tanks and the last shuttle. Mir was still in orbit, and became another habitat.

At the beginning of the story, the protagonists, Alex McLeod and Gordon Tanner are "dipping" the Earth's atmosphere for nitrogen. They are shot down, and crash north of Minnesota on the glacier. The politicians and pseudo-scientists blamed the ice age on these dip-trips, which removed only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of air from the atmosphere, all of which returned to Earth when it outgassed from the habitats.

The entire world is against them. The various government agencies are fighting over jurisidiction over who gets to arrest them like jackals on a carcass; air force, CIA, FBI, everyone. Crushed by gravity, helpless, a world of four billion people against them.

Except for a small, hated, hunted group, known as science fiction fans. Who set out on a Quixotic quest onto the ice to rescue the stranded angels.

What follows is an adventure across an America none of us would recognize. From a medieval Milwaukee to the Museum of Science and Appropriate Technology in Chicago, and beyond. It is a heartbreaking and increasingly frightening story as reality begins to mimic the fiction.


SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
Don't read past this point if you don't want the ending at least partially ruined.

You were warned.

In the end, what saves the dying habitats, what may have saved the dying U.S.... is trading value for value. Establishing a trade route, the exchange of knowledge and goods, in the end, benefits everyone involved.

I think Rand would have liked the story. Not exactly Objectivist, but well worth reading, even if you are.