The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson
The standard model for climate change fiction is a narrative of calamity piling up, or of living among calamity. The fact that our system for living, one we support time and time again through our democracy, embeds us as part of the problem (some, admittedly, much more than others) seems to make divergence from a path to this calamity difficult to imagine.
But mapping out how this divergence could occur - scientifically, technologically, socioeconomically, ethically, and even spiritually - is Robinson's aim here. The central, eponymous concept is the creation, under the Paris Agreement, of a Ministry for the Future, a UN body focused on representing future generations and non-human residents of Earth. In Robinson's telling, this Ministry uses its limited budget in a precisely targeted way, finding the physical and - especially - the financial fulcrums where small changes can exact large gains.
But that's the philosophical backdrop. The novel itself opens with, appropriately for the subgenre, a calamitous near-future heatwave in continental India that, over a few days, kills tens of millions of people. This event unsettles the global order, with India's Hindu nationalist political class toppled, and solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering unilaterally undertaken by the nation. It also motivates its characters, providing a clear view of the peril for the Ministry's head, Mary Murphy, and fuelling the rage of Frank May, an aid worker survivor of the heatwave. Their paths become entangled as the novel progresses over several decades, but much of the novel is a tapestry woven from parallel stories. These are told both by other inhabitants of the imperiled world and, fancifully, from the perspective of inanimate objects like a photon, a carbon atom and the Market.
While the overarching focus is climate change, as the novel progresses this broadens to encompass two key facets of this: refugees and biodiversity. Many of the strands, and especially those of Frank, deal with the trials, traumas and then resolutions of people forced to migrate directly by climate change, or indirectly because of its downstream societal impacts. In Robinson’s 21st century, after decades of strife, the world ultimately adopts a system explicitly modelled on the Nansen Passport scheme from the early 20th century. In parallel, he creates a Half-Earth movement that slowly but steadily drives societies to cede half of the Earth’s land area to nature, consolidating existing communities in cities, and allowing wildlife to recover in the wake of their retreat.
Wearing my Earth scientist hat, it’s refreshing, if ever so slightly uncomfortable, to read a climate change novel in which science doesn't play the dominant role in its resolution. It’s clearly important in framing the problem, and in monitoring its resolution, but the most successful drivers come from the economic and societal changes that the Ministry (and other bodies) engineer. Markets are tamed and repurposed via a carbon currency, financial transparency is hard-wired via a blockchain that destroys secrecy and corruption, and social media is democratised to put its power back into the hands of its users. And, as readers of his Mars trilogy of novels will attest, Robinson puts a lot of imaginative effort into how exactly these socioeconomic forces might be realised - arguably a little too much effort in some particularly dry segments.
An aspect I found intriguing, and liable to cause Robinson some trouble, is the novel's attitude to geoengineering. As mentioned already, SRM geoengineering plays an early and successful role in the novel, although it's clearly labelled as a temporary, placeholder fix in the narrative. But the novel also runs with icesheet management geoengineering, essentially pumping out the meltwater that lubricates icesheet collapse, and touches briefly on a novel (to me) mode of "staining" the waters of the Arctic Ocean to decrease its warming. These are all presented as successful needs-must approaches - a view of the potential role of geoengineering that I share myself, but a likely contentious one for environmentally-inclined fellow-travellers. For many, the moral hazard argument against geoengineering (sometimes even against just contemplating it) is simply unsurpassable. On a not-dissimilar note, Robinson doesn't shy away from issues of population, particularly where demographic transition in his imagined future brings benefits. Again, liable to upset some in the environmental movement who - with some justification - are ideologically opposed to contemplating this facet of Earth's problems.
Notwithstanding all of the foregoing positives, the novel isn't without its weaknesses. Principally in the character of Frank, whose role in the narrative is just too muddy - particularly so given he's introduced in such a pivotal way, and then precipitates a fateful run-in with Mary. But his arc quickly runs out of steam, and he becomes an ill-defined foil to Mary's more prominent narrative. More generally, the episodic nature of the novel - which has many "ecological sci-fi" precedents, including Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar and Brin's Earth - has a habit here of introducing then dropping threads that were just getting interesting. For instance, the whole "black ops" wing of the Ministry tantalisingly appears and then disappointingly evaporates, lost, seemingly, in a crush of competing threads. Plus, as already noted, Robinson's excitable fleshing out of some of his socioeconomic solutions can be tinder-dry at times.
But the ambition and scale of the novel absolves it of all of these problems. It’s easily the most realistic “climate positive” novel I’ve read. It may sound stupid out of context, but it’s quite the thing to read of atmospheric CO2 not just peaking but actually dropping, and dropping fast (5 ppm per year) by the end of the novel. I had to stop when I read that, as continual CO2 rise is just a simple, lifelong fact. But it’s not exactly a happy-clappy utopian novel, where the penny suddenly drops for everyone and we all start behaving sensibly. Instead, it's much more of an anti-dystopian tale, in which the planetary handbrake turn that’s executed is actually the result of the slow accumulation of multiple credible steps. So this feeds into a sense of realism and, for me at least, a more genuine positivity about the future.
I should conclude by noting that I finished reading it in the same week as I watched the darkly satirical Don’t Look Up. While that’s an excellent howl of a movie, one that doesn’t offer anything by way of a solution (or really intend to), this is much closer to the real deal. But the contrast between them was enjoyable to savour. I’ll be recommending it to my Earth science colleagues, but I think it’d be an enjoyable and informative read for anyone. If - characteristically for Robinson - a long one.
Stray observations:
- I thought it was only me who was imagining something like the Half-Earth movement. Obviously not. It’s not a concept that I’ve seen written down before, but it seemed like a pretty good idea to me - and clearly to Robinson too. Of course, long-term I’d like to see a Whole-Earth movement in which we abandon the Earth to do interesting things elsewhere, leaving our cradle free for successor species …
- Much like the Mars trilogy, Robinson has a nice section near the end where a major character takes a trip that allows the world that he’s built-up to shine. Here, more so than in the Mars triology, this feels necessary - like it shows what our efforts could achieve if we do the right thing, both by the Earth and by those living in it who are less fortunate than ourselves. In a literature dominated by abundant dystopias, giving a vision of how things could be different hit the spot for me. Ditto, as already mentioned, the novel’s late turnaround point when atmospheric pCO2 starts decreasing.
- Another intriguing suggestion of Robinson’s is that advances in computing, AI and automation (none of which seem unreasonable) favour a kind of “Red Plenty” economics. Essentially, the market is (I think) streamlined and out-guessed by computing systems to the point that its purported efficiencies are unnecessary. It’s the portion of the novel where it feels closest to utopian thinking, but there’s still at least a veneer of realism.
- It’s kind-of funny to contrast how David Brin’s corresponding stab at the future, Earth, treats the Swiss compared to here. For Robinson, they’re kind-of a beacon of sanity - albeit one with flaws - whereas Brin just made them the bad guys, what with their secret banking and mountains of gold. (Admittedly, he does claim that he did it for the surprise value.)
- As an oceanographer, I can’t let the novel’s passing reference to the ocean that I’ve reproduced below go unmentioned. While it’s negative about the prospects for us doing anything to help the ocean, I can’t say that I disagree. Absorbing so much heat and CO2, it’s been extensively perturbed, and on a scale that we’d struggle to redress. So I’d agree with Robinson that probably the best we can do is stop making things worse, and allow it to just recover on its own.
- I mentioned the strange position of Frank in the novel before, but the late and completely unnecessary introduction of a potential romantic partner for Mary is another strange misstep. It’s brief, and just a small part of the “Earth is healing” segment near the end, but it’s pretty glaringly incongruous in a novel that’s otherwise quite disinterested in its characters’ emotional lives.
