Bruce Sterling, as usual, says it best. Remember that Heavy Weather came out in 1994, and then go read it.
“You have to wonder now, not what happens when people accept the truth, but how people who deny the truth can maintain the psychosis. All the proper points were fully made years ago. Like, when you’re on the Governor’s staff in Austin right now, and you prayed for rain months ago and none arrived, and the soil is so dry that sewer pipes are cracking in the dessicated, shrinking turf, how do you go home and sleep? I mean, it’s your own home. It’s not like Murdoch’s propaganda waters your lawn.”