Waiting for the Great Turn?

The Ministry for the Future's climate solutions

Hello, fellow voyagers🖖! In today’s edition we’ll have a look at the climate solutions presented in the book The Ministry for the Future.

In the book The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, an extreme heatwave episode kills 20 million people in India in the year 2025. This event, known as the Great Turn, serves as the climate catastrophe that pushes India over the edge, transforming it into a global leader on climate action.

Over several decades, a wide range of technological and societal measures are used to effect change:

• The introduction of a global carbon coin as an incentive to reduce carbon emissions

• Geoengineering to reduce global temperatures, such as injecting reflective particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet, direct carbon capture and storage, or pumping out meltwater from underneath glaciers to stabilize the ice sheets

• Reforestation and ecosystem restoration

• Decentralized renewable energy

• Economic and political reforms, such as degrowth and wealth redistribution

• Direct action, including sabotage of fossil fuel infrastructure and other high-emission industries, hijacking airplanes, private jets and cargo ships, as well as targeting wealthy individuals considered climate criminals—climate terrorism

• Technological innovation, including more efficient energy storage batteries, electric vehicles, and the reintroduction of airships for transportation and cargo

• Sustainable agricultural practices, such as permaculture

• Global cooperation and governance through The Ministry for the Future, the organization that represents the rights of future generations

• Cultural and behavioural shifts, such as reducing consumption and prioritizing community and ecological well-being over profit—the 2000-Watt Society

• Adaptation measures, including preparing for extreme weather conditions, building resilient infrastructure, and relocation of vulnerable people

All of the above measures are familiar to anyone interested in climate solutions, except for three: the carbon coin, The Ministry for the Future, and climate terrorism.

The carbon coin is especially interesting to me because I work for a company that wants to create the first payment method based on renewable energy. Similar to the carbon coin, a currency based on renewable energy could incentivize the production of green energy, the construction of sustainable infrastructure, and investment in technologies like efficient battery storage. As the CEO of my company likes to say, this could create new business models in the internet of energy. I hope that we succeed in our mission!

I find the idea of The Ministry for the Future as an organization that facilitates change by advocating for the rights of future generations fascinating. Currently, I’m writing a mosaic novel, There Is Hope, about life in the year 2550 CE, exploring how the future might look if we reach 5°C of warming by the end of this century—a possible worst case scenario. It’s Dune meets Mad Max with a side of communism—I grew up under the most extreme communist regime in Europe. I’m glad that my imaginary future characters get to be represented by the equally imaginary Ministry for the Future, established at COP29 in 2024—unless I missed something, no such ministry was created in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024.

Finally, the book explores climate terrorism as a measure to stop climate criminals from pursuing high-emissions activities. This isn’t the kind of climate activism that involves gluing oneself to artwork or blocking highways. Rather, it’s the CEO hunter-type of terrorism, strikingly similar to what a young man named Luigi Mangione did last December in New York, targeting the CEO of a health insurance company. Many readers found this particular ‘climate solution’ repugnant, but they may rest assured that while Kim Stanley Robinson famously said There is no planet B, he doesn’t support terrorism in real life. Even though it addresses the most urgent issue of our time, The Ministry for the Future is a work of fiction, not a climate change mitigation manual.

What about us? What climate disaster will be our Great Turn? The California fires that devastated Los Angeles, the third richest city in the world, in January 2025? The USA doesn’t seem likely to lead the revolution, I guess we’ll have to wait.

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Community corner

Thank you for reading The Ministry for the Future with me! This was a summary of my conclusions and open questions after reading the book for the second time.

Now, I’d like to hear from you:

• What do you think about the book?

• Do you believe a Great Turn is inevitable in real life?

• What do you think about the idea of a carbon coin or a payment method based on renewable energy?

Finally, if you’re curious what it means to consume only 2000 Watts per year—a quarter of the average US energy consumption per person—you can read about how an environment reporter took on the challenge.

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Did you participate in the daily life project?

Readers of The Ministry for the Future were invited to participate in the daily life project and write an essay by the end of February. If you did, please share your essay in a comment below.

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As a writer, my goal is to inspire action through fiction. I write cli-fi and speculative stories on climate change, transhumanism, and our evolving relationship with nature and technology. Subscribe to get my stories directly in your inbox! If you get a paid upgrade, you’ll get my mosaic cli-fi novel There Is Hope as an eBook in spring.