Let's talk 'The Ministry for the Future'
Community Thread
Hello, story voyagers! In today’s edition, we’ll discuss fiction that inspires action by diving into ‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson.
In November 2024, we started reading The Ministry for the Future by
. After a strong start, with a lively exchange in the chat feature of Substack, we lost some steam over the busy winter holidays. It’s not you, it’s me! This is the first time I’m hosting a book reading on Story Voyager, and I’m learning as we go. Thanks for your patience!Let's talk 'The Ministry for the Future'
We started with the community discussions in Substack’s chat room. However, I feel this left out many subscribers who interact with this newsletter only via their inboxes. That’s why we’re moving the talks here to this Community Thread. I will kickstart the talks by summarising what we’ve discussed so far in the chat and leave you with a set of questions that we can answer in the comments section as we continue reading the book. On February 20, I will send a final essay reflecting how ‘The Ministry for the Future’ inspires action through fiction.
This means there’s roughly one month to read the book as a community. After the essay, we’ll have one final debrief with community members. If you haven’t had a chance yet, now’s a great time to pick up the book. For those of you reading along, thanks for your participation! 🙌
As expected, ‘The Ministry for the Future’ fuelled a lively discussion from the start with a strong opening chapter describing a heatwave episode in India that killed 2 million people over a week.
‘I loved the chapter with the heatwave. It was the most real, devastating and palpable result of all we’ve done to this planet. The inescapable heat was very vividly described.’—
Three months into reading the book, the world silently watched as the city of Los Angeles, the fifth largest economy, was burning. As I read the news and watched the footage, I couldn’t help but think of the opening chapter of ‘The Ministry for the Future’. Is the LA fire the climate disaster that will catalyze change like the heatwave episode did in the book? This remains to be seen. Meanwhile, reading this note from November reminds me that we might have even less time than we think.
Obviously, I hope none of us get stuck in a situation as dire as the one KSR lays out, but the odds are that some of us will in the next decades or so. For me, that makes even the fiction feel very realistic and close to home.—
We discussed at length one aspect of the book: the morality and/or feasibility of the climate solutions presented.
‘The Ministry is an interesting idea—currently, the law has set a precedent for the rights of children regarding climate, and there are overlaps with the Public Trust Doctrine and how it has been applied to the atmosphere for the sake of future generations in the Netherlands (Urgenda v Netherlands). Plus, the Earth Law is the fastest-growing legal movement in the world; it covers many approaches, and the rights of future generations are among them.—
There was general agreement that The Ministry for the Future, the UN subsidiary body created at COP29—shortly before the Indian heatwave—with the mission ‘to advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens, whose rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are as valid as ours’ was a good idea. However, many questioned whether a new agency created by the West can make any meaningful impact, given that it does not address the central issue of viewing nature as property and humans as separate from nature. An energy company chainsawed hundreds of trees in the Mojave Desert to build a solar project. This is not an isolated case. The green energy industry causes mass deforestation around the world. The human-nature relationship is the root cause of our current climate crisis, which is largely an ecological crisis leading
to ask the question Is 2025 the Year 'Nature' Replaces 'Climate'?On this line of thought, there was a chapter in the book discussing the equal division of world resources via the 2000 Watt Society—a Swiss proposal that citizens in the first world consume ‘no more than 2,000 watts (equivalent to 2 kilowatt-hours per hour or 48 kilowatt-hours per day)’— and having ‘enough’ as a human right.
Living on a sailboat gives me an advantage in living sustainably, especially in terms of watt and water usage. Monitoring and conservation are built into the lifestyle. I can’t run a heater and electric kettle at the same time, so 2,000 watts sounds just fine. Evidence we don’t need as much as we think, which the Society seemed to prove as well. If people in Switzerland can happily use 2,000 watts a day then it seems like most households could manage. And if that’s only from the grid, imagine how much easier it would be with solar.—
The logistics of who consumes how much energy remind me of the ancient water distribution systems. Everyone got a share based on their social standing, and one day per week, those who had surplus water could sell it to those who had extra needs.
Another solution for the climate crisis proposed in ‘The Ministry for the Future’ had us all question the role of morality in the face of impending Anthropocene planetary destruction. In one chapter narrated most probably by the Children of Kali—an extremist group formed after India’s horrific heatwave—there’s a proposal to eliminate the people in charge of burning the last fossil reserves for profit. They came with a total of 500 people who make the executive decisions for the nineteen largest organizations that own the last 3000 gigaton of fossil carbon located in the ground. Humans consume 40 gigaton per year, and we can burn 500 gigaton more before we get in trouble—as of 2020, when the book came out.
It makes me think of the book ‘Hot to Blowup a Pipeline’. It prevents the argument that no social movement in history has had success through solely peaceful tactics. There has always been a violent group, which allows authorities to appeal to the nonviolent group to come to an agreement.—
The climate terrorist acts of the Children of Kali include sinking cargo ships though saving the fishing staff who were kept as slaves on the boats, hijacking airplanes and the jet planes of the billionaires, and generally killing the rich who burn the planet to the ground.
There is sabotage and other uses of force—crashing planes and sinking ships, killing individuals who hold high positions among the fossil fuel elite who hold the rest of the world hostage. The author shows us, mostly through the viewpoint of Mary, the Minister for the Future, the frustrating process of using legal means to influence the powerful. As she and her team are engaged in negotiations, she acquires a ‘know-but-don’t-know’ half-permissive awareness of the extra-legal, more drastic means of change that the other hidden forces—maybe even linked to her ministry—are deploying. Interesting things to think about, especially since, thus far, these forces seem to be by far the story’s most successful in tackling the problems.—
Another real-world case that happened while we were reading the book, the killing of the CEO of the largest US health insurance company, and the cheerful public response prompted me to reflect on the blurred lines of justice. While condemned by many, the public reaction was a desperate call for change. This draws a tragic parallel to what is happening in the book and back in the real world where we face burning climate change issues.
Probably all climate-related organizations would be branded as terrorist and either arrested, have their funding cut, or at least lose their non-profit status. (There’s a bill going through the US Congress right now to make it very easy to brand NGOs as terror-supporting). This is not to mention the morality of it. ‘Burning the village in order to save it’ is always reprehensible.—
While public opinion is still divided on the issue of climate change, governments around the world take climate change very seriously and are already preparing for inevitable unrest and extremist actions. In 2015, when the climate strike that was supposed to take place in Paris was canceled due to an unrelated terrorist attack, climate activist leaders were placed on house arrest to ensure that they didn’t go out on the street. This was possible because these people were monitored and tracked in a database.
Larry, branding climate organizations as terrorists is rich, considering we support a country currently waging genocide on innocent people. If humanity spent half its war budget on climate solutions, we’d all be better off.—
Ultimately, one of the characters in the book puts it best:
You pay for being the victim, not the criminal.—Kim Stanley Robinson
Thank you so much for your enthusiasm in reading and discussing ‘The Ministry for the Future’. Let’s use the last month to wrap up our ideas and deepen the conversation in the comments section.
I’d like to continue talking about:
Will the LA fires be a turning point in our fight against climate change, just as the book’s first chapter was a catalyst for change?
Can we draw a parallel between the Luigi Mangione case and the billionaire hunters in the book? What do you think about employing extreme measures to right a wrong? Who decides what is moral or not?
What do you think about using carbon coins as a solution for phasing out fossil fuel consumption?
Last but not least, would you live in an airship? Or are you too afraid of heights? 😜
Let’s get the conversation started!👇
If you haven’t read the book yet, please feel free to join the conversation. We’re touching on topics of general interest for anyone who is human and lives on planet Earth in these trying times. Better yet, you still have one month to read the book with us!
Some of the chapters are really heartbreaking and others make you think. It is a great read so far.—
P.S.: I wrote a piece of satire based on the book, I hope you’ll enjoy it: What if Vlad the Impaler ran The Ministry for the Future?
I’m a strong believer in using ironic humour to nudge behavioural change.—
P.P.S.: Don’t forget about the daily life project accompanying this read. I’m looking forward to your essay by the end of February.
I asked Johnathan Reid of ReidItWrite - https://reiditwrite.substack.com/ - about airships.
I was wondering how come they appear in sci-fi writing and he told me that they can be a good alternative for human and goods transportation. He also sent me an informative video and an article to learn more about airships:
- https://youtu.be/h0hpcpnWAsQ
- https://www.elidourado.com/p/cargo-airships
I wanted to share for those interested!
Thanks for putting this summary together, I haven't been following along, so good to have it all presented nicely! I also fell off the reading train as I got totally swept away in Not the End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie, which is so hopeful and pragmatic.