Book: The Ministry for the Future
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Review by: Jim Reed, president, YKK Corp. of America
How will we save the planet from the ravages of climate change?
According to Robinson’s sweeping “hard science fiction” novel, The Ministry for the Future, it can be done. It will, however, be very difficult and very, very messy.
Robinson kicks the story off with a horribly gripping depiction of an extreme heat wave that kills over 20 million people. Over the course of the next 106 chapters, we are taken around the world and introduced to a wide range of characters navigating the repercussions of a warming planet, from central bankers to refugees. We even get to meet a carbon atom as it goes through its many lives as space dust, granite, atmospheric gas and eventually to sequestration.
Don’t let the “hard” in “hard science fiction” turn you off. This just means Robinson sticks to real science and avoids fantasy, a hallmark of traditional science fiction. This book it is much more of an exploration of current climate science, economic theory and social science. No lasers or spaceships here.
The sprawling novel is centered around Mary Murphy, who founds the Ministry for the Future, an underfunded United Nations ministry created without any real authority under the Paris Agreement to advocate for future generations. Mary and her small staff of lawyers, climate scientists, political operatives and data engineers pull on the many threads necessary to keep the world from killing itself, educating and fascinating us along the way.
Robinson addresses many important aspects of our current state of affairs, including the fact that the global economic and political systems are designed to maintain the post-war status quo, which includes protecting national interests over global destruction, and maintaining the extreme wealth of an incredibly small group of people.
The book really hits home on several fronts. For example, it explores a chilling scenario in which a catastrophic climate event that kills at scale could radicalize survivors, pushing them to take matters into their own hands with drone strikes targeting oil industry executives, heavily polluting ocean tankers and even the commercial airline industry.
Whatever the future holds, the book makes it seem naïve to think there will not be a reckoning for our hubris.
The Ministry for the Future outlines how clever engineers devise ways to preserve the Arctic ice cap. I won’t give that away, but surprisingly, the most fascinating parts of the book are the lengthy discourses on global finance and the eventual development of the carbon coin.
Relying on Delton Chen’s work on what he calls a Global Carbon Reward, Mr. Robinson envisions how this shift in global economic systems can drive global change.
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Each year, Global Atlanta asks influential readers and community leaders to review the most impactful book they read during the course of the year. This endeavor has continued annually since 2010.
See last year’s full list of books on BookShop here, and all 2021 reader picks here.
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