The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson — Jonathan Leggett
Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future offers a detailed look into what the next thirty years could look like, from the changing climate to the political, legal and social repercussions being explored in meticulous and often highly knowledgeable detail. Robinson offers not only a vision of climate catastrophe, but also policies and societal changes that could divert the worst. From a carbon coin to a massive growth in workers co-operatives, Robinson clearly agrees with Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything that climate change is not only a crisis, but also an opportunity to build a better future.
The book mixes together the narratives of climate disaster survivors, refugees, glaciologists, and Mary Murphy, the chief of the eponymous UN ministry which is established at COP29. Alongside these narratives are chapters offering glimpses into the changing world through the eyes of farmers, pilots, assassins and government workers, as well as discussions on topics as diverse as capitalism and blockchain, and memorable monologues by carbon molecules, energy and history, among other semi-abstract entities.
The book opens in India in the near future, being hit by a heatwave that will kill more than 20 million people. Such a heatwave is likely to occur in the next ten years. Viewed through the eyes of Frank, an American aid work in the region, the chapter is a difficult read but an important one. Slowly watching everyone around him die, Frank’s experience sets the scene for the trauma that will haunt him, and the world, for much of the book.
The book feels to a great extent to be in the aftermath to this event, with the power of the chapter ensuring that the reader does not forget what is at stake in tackling catastrophic climate change. It could perhaps be even more powerful had it been through the eyes of a local, watching their community die around them — this would also have avoided the potential criticism of only viewing suffering of people of colour through a white lens.
Robinson goes on to artfully describe broad macrohistoric changes alongside the lives of those living this history, from revolutions in Saudi Arabia to hiking trips of Mary and Frank, providing the reader with an understanding of the world as a whole alongside the lived experiences of those in it. That being said, this happening alongside snapshots, academic discussions and abstract monologues does make for a rather lengthy book — hopefully this does not stop those outside of climate and sci-fi circles reading it, but one has to consider that this is likely.
There are clear demonstrations that Robinson is highly knowledgeable about a range of policies that can help build a better future — from his references to Chen’s Carbon Coin paper to discussions of blockchaining money to crack down on tax havens, there is clear economic understanding of what direction we could be heading as a society. There is perhaps an over-optimism in the idea that central bankers will come to the rescue, but this is a wider issue with the book which will be discussed below.
Whilst Robinson’s grasp on environmental economics is clearly up to date and in-depth, one cannot say the same for all fields. Most damningly is the peripheral place given to indigenous peoples. Their role in averting climate catastrophe is never given more than a brief reference, despite the fact that their role is central — from protecting carbon sinks and biodiversity to being on the front lines fighting fossil fuel development, indigenous justice is climate justice, yet this is a glaring omission.
The ”Half Earth movement” that Robinson describes — perhaps an extension of the much criticized 30–30 project to devote 30% of the planet to wildlife by 2030 — is a great example of how the place of indigenous people in the fight to halt climate catastrophe is not understood, whilst fortress conservation is glorified. Robinson describes vast swathes of landscape being cleared of people (and these people being very generously compensated) to make way for wildlife, with the long term view that people will return to act as stewards of the land. However, this ignores that for most civilisations, for most of human history, people were and are already stewards of the land. The support for mass clearances shows an outdated understanding of humans and nature as being separate entities, when in fact a more integrated understanding is likely to provide more holistic climate solutions, whilst also not endangering the lives and cultures of indigenous people.
This reflects a broader misunderstanding about biodiversity policy; in briefings about extinctions, we hear about charismatic megafauna such as tigers and pandas going extinct, when in fact the real mass extinction is happening amongst insects and plants. Of course, megafauna such as the tiger are keystone species which are crucial to habitat make-up, but should not be the sole focus of biodiversity policy. Focusing on this, although giving a more visual idea of the sixth mass extinction, ignores perhaps more important aspects of mass extinction.
Another key flaw is that, despite the descriptions of awful natural disasters from the heatwave in India to the flooding of Los Angeles, this book is too optimistic. The rise of the far-right is mentioned, but only demonstrated by a few people getting into a fight in a park. CEOs of fossil fuel companies are not shown as incredibly powerful lobbyists who hold sway over politicians, media, and international conventions, but rather cowering in island fortresses and slowly getting assassinated. Perhaps an event such as the one which opens the book would lead to such a change in global politics that this would be the state of the far-right and society’s kleptomaniac king-makers, but this seems to be strangely hopeful in an otherwise realistic book. The same goes for the aforementioned central bankers. Robinson describes the next thirty years as being the end of capitalism, poverty and global warming in one enormous societal change, with authoritarians falling, bankers finding consciences and some sort of left wing wet dream unfolding with minimal opposition. I would love this to be the case, but business-as-usual doesn’t go away that easily.
Despite these pitfalls, and more — from the glorification of the Paris Agreement and the underdevelopment of the Ministry’s Black Ops wing — The Ministry for the Future is an incredibly important book, and worth a read. Its ultimate message is that we are in a climate catastrophe, and people are going to die; disproportionately these will be underprivileged people from low and middle income countries. When disaster hits rich countries, it will be the poor people in these countries who will face the worst of it.
Despite this, Robinson offers a vision of hope. That despite the frankly horrific events the future holds, we can still avert the worst of it. We can build a different society, one which is more just, equitable and sustainable. It might be through the methods described in this book, it might not be. It will definitely be implemented through a range of methods, from international negotiations to national political upheaval to acts of sabotage and more by those willing to go to extremes to protect the future. A range of changes are necessary to avert the worst, and these will be enacted in a range of ways. This all sums up to the defining message of the book: Another world is possible.
