The Cli-Sci genre of fiction (Sci-Fi about the climate future) has got me thinking about my own visions of the long-term climate future. Am reading Ministry for the Future (2021) By Kim Stanley Robinson. If anyone wants to join me in discussing this book, that would be fun. It has got me imagining how my own views compare with Robinson.
The novel, which spans 70 years into the future, begins with a catastrophic heat wave in 2025 that kills 22 million people in and around Delhi, India. This catastrophe sets off a chain reaction that puts India in the center of climate action. The Ministry for the Future is a UN group tasked with solving the climate crisis. The main characters are the head of the Ministry for the Future and an American who is the sole survivor of the India heatwave.
My husband gave me this book and I didn't want to read it until I realized it's actually an optimistic vision of how the human race narrowly escapes biosphere collapse. If you've read it or decide to read it, let's talk about it. And any other cli-fi.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/books/kim-stanley-robinson-sci-fi.html
Forgot to tag a few people on this topic, just in case you are interested: @chromosomexy @raincloud @lovendures @bluebelle Iridium @billy mike @lenor @lynnventura @deetoo @cc21 @jampa @Maggie @teriz @tonyaW
@jeanne-mayell I ordered my copy. It will be here on Friday. I'm very excited to start reading it. I'm curious if Robinson's purpose for writing it is to craft a blueprint for the UN to follow, so we can prevent a catastrophe from happening...
@jeanne-mayell I’m intrigued and will order the book. I look forward to the discussion here and am happy to know it’s a creative, positive story overall. Thank you for a wonderful meditation tonight, too.
@jeanne-mayell Just ordered it. Apparently Barack Obama loved it. Can't wait to read it and discuss with our community. Thanks Jeanne!
One thing that hooked me early in the book is the rise of terrorism against climate offenders. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll hold off on details, but after the India heatwave, Indian terrorists rise up to avenge these deaths and force the world's hand. They make quick work of the commercial airline industry, billionaires, weapons manufacturers, and the powerful who have prevented real climate action. It's not something I've seen in my future visions, since good guys usually don't do terrorism. But it is in the book, and once people start dying en masse, I have always felt that a certain group of humanity aren't going to take it lying down.
@jeanne-mayell "Ministry of the Future" ordered! Love the idea of a book club! PS sorry I missed the Circle of Light last night... been so exhausted lately. Am making a commitment to joining you again starting next week. Tah.
@jeanne-mayell I ordered the book from Ebay. Can't wait to read it, it sounds like a thriller!
@jeanne-mayell Thanks for this! I actually jumped online and bought it via Kindle last night and started reading. Really intriguing! I can't wait to continue.
Just placed a hold with my library - I should have it in my grubby little hands tomorrow!
@jeanne-mayell I ordered the book and look forward to discussions. This is a good idea. Thanks
@jeanne-mayell I ordered the book from Ebay. Can't wait to read it, it sounds like a thriller!
It’s an intellectual thriller. You will learn a lot about the socio economic political and technological forces surrounding climate change— the world economic and political structure that prevents change, the psychology behind change and the more doable ideas that can fix it.
The two main characters are helper personalities, an American aid worker who survived the initial catastrophic heat wave in India and how that blows up his life. And the woman who is the head of the UN Ministry for the Future. I guarantee you will find your self among these characters.
I would love to do a meditation after a bunch of us have read it on what we see for the future.
@jeanne-mayell Potentially very good news... relating to energy production and dealing with decades of nuclear waste from power plants... Nobel Laureate Gerard Mourou is working on a technology... using lasers to potentially cut down the half-life of nuclear waste from millions of years to 30 minutes. I just came across this article from 2019; there are newer stories about it, too. Apparently it is still being worked on... so while we're waiting on the development of nuclear fusion or another alternative to fossil fuels, hopefully an interim solution may be found for the dangerous waste from nuclear fission...
https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/high-power-sylos-laser-could-transmute-nuclear-waste
I have "felt" for sometime that we are on the edge of incredible changes in our understanding of "reality" through science... whether it be medicine, technology, material science... etc. As a lay person I haunt science articles looking for cutting edge advances.
@jeanne-mayell Are you sure it's not depressing? I'm curious to know what the book says but I don't have room in my psyche to dwell on downers right now.
@ana. I would not have started reading it at all if I thought it would make me depressed. I am too sensitive. So I waited for my husband to read it first and realized it was going to be okay. I'm halfway through, and the tone is hopeful but I needed to find out from my husband how it turns out or I wouldn't read it. The NY Times article I linked about the book calls it a utopian story. But not shallow. The author knows his subject. He is deeply aware of the world monetary system, the government resistance to change, and all the problems we face. He tackles them brilliantly in fiction.
I can give you a synopsis from my husband but it's a big SPOILER ALERT: I don't mind knowing what is going to happen because it's in the details, not the main plot, that I like this book. I wanted to talk about it in the forum because I'd love to know what people think of the ideas. And I like fantasizing that some of the positive events will happen.
SO SPOILER ALERT - don't read ahead if you want to be surprised: In the beginning, there is a heat wave that kills 22 million people in a region of India. An Indian terrorist group forms after that that takes matters into their own hands that you might not like although I liked it. They go after the rogue billionaires and powerbrokers who are harming the world. When you consider how many deaths these people have caused and will continue to cause, then their fate seems appropriate. But so far, these assassinations are not mentioned and I think he mentions them as something that happened in the past after we are well into the future, without naming anyone or even describing the incidents. The writer is not interested in sensationalizing violence.
India becomes a model for climate change activism. California also becomes a model and goes zero carbon and then negative carbon. California is amazing. They save every inch of rainwater during floods and use it during droughts. Eventually (not there yet) they set up a carbon monetary system that works and they start lowering carbon footprint.
He shows how the banks control the world and how the world doesn't care about saving people of the future. But things change and they save the world. They pump water up from the bottom of the glaciers and prevent them from sliding into the ocean. The carbon-based monetary system works. People who reduce carbon make money from it.
@jeanne-mayell Thanks. I have to share that my book club met today and were very grateful for the opportunity to vent about SCOTUS with women who 50 years ago fought and marched and wrote letters and voted for pro choice candidates. We all agreed it is very difficult to stay positive and optimistic about the future but agreed about the need to do so. It's a struggle but small like minded groups keep us sane. What is our deadline for reading the forum book club book?
SPOILER ALERT!
So I'm up to Ch. 17 and I love this book! I'm hooked. My feeling is that it makes everything we're dealing with now pale in comparison to what is coming down the road if we don't act soon on climate change. Climate Change is going to effect every aspect of our lives.
If the insurance industry is so exhausted monetarily that it can't and won't pay out any longer for homes and businesses ruined by environmental catastrophes and wars, that governments have to take over the burden of paying for people to rebuild, then GAME OVER for our economies. But maybe this is what should happen. If we're always looking for repayment of services and goods to help out our fellow neighbors then the cost will always increase at the expense of people who can't afford it and work their lives away to repay. But the idea of everybody living with just ENOUGH is a powerful thought. No more 1%-er world billionaires that control the capital and laws and politicians. If everyone lived within their means and everyone had just enough to survive and be happy, then do we feel more naturally inclined to want to help out people and businesses in our community and on the opposite side of the globe who are struggling? It raises a powerful question and that is, "If everyone has enough to be comfortable, then do we seek to maintain that not just for ourselves but for everyone else naturally?"
And further, the way our current political and financial systems are currently evolving day by day, are we on track and moving in that direction of redistributing the wealth across the globe away from the haves and more equally toward the have-nots. Questions, thoughts, ideas, disagreements. Talk amongst yourselves....
@chromosomexy Just reached chapter 25…. I’m hooked, too. “Ministry for the Future” is informative, thought provoking, disturbing but hopeful… with credible characters.
Published in 2020, a mere two years later global headlines underscore the reality of the book’s themes.
In the real world… Paris is sizzling. A French climatologist has just observed publicly that her predictions for climate change 30 years hence – have already occurred this year. US and EU officials are currently trying to obtain the freedom of a climate activist in Vietnam. Extreme temperatures once associated only with places like Death Valley… are becoming shocking headlines around the world.
I will never forget one recent newspaper photo taken in India: Thousands and thousands of hot, thirsty impoverished families and their animals taking refuge in the only shade for miles…beneath massive elevated highways… an icon of our modern technological world
The fictional discussions within the “Ministry” are by turns terrifying, hopeful, maddening … and oh so very human. The author’s use of internal dialog is masterful.
Academic data and philosophical discussions sprinkled throughout the book occasionally made my eyes cross… but every single one of those discussions have brought me up short… and made crystal clear the tangled complexity of science, data… and human patterns of thought.
I love this book. I recommend it even to those who normally avoid the sci-fi genre.
Complex? Yes.
Helpful in understanding climate change mitigation? Yes.
Witty? Definitely.