"A Code Red for Humanity": Is it time for a Ministry for the Future, Part 1

Political economy, climate change, international relations, science fiction -- these are some of my favorite things to discuss and they all come together in the most compelling book that I have read in years:?The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.?I enjoy sci-fi because of the world-building that creates alternate realities from our own.?It's a way of thinking about our own world from the perspective of a different one.?In the Ministry for the Future (MFTF for short), the story begins only a few years from now after a few more years of climate change.?This book has made me think a great deal about the future -- for myself, the rest of humanity, and the planet.?Watching the COP26 conference in Scotland and the relatively weak efforts that world leaders have taken over the years and are currently prepared to take, I am deeply troubled by the future.?

Our Near-Term Future?

MFTF opens in the near future of 2025 with a brutal heat wave in India that, combined with the collapse of the local electrical grid, kills 20 million people who are literally poached in the high temperature and high humidity.?India becomes radicalized in its approach to climate change and world governments respond by creating a new international organization whose mission is to protect the earth for future generations.??

Given our recent extreme weather, the starting point of this book feels all too realistic.?Over the last year in North America we have experienced heatwaves in the Northwest, drought and wildfires in the West, a deep freeze in Texas, bomb cyclones, and epic hurricanes.?The book has some grizzly chapters, which are all too realistic.?In addition to the Indian heat wave, an atmospheric river washes away most of Los Angeles and Orange County.?The loss of life is not too extreme, but the homes and properties of 10 million people are totaled.?In our real world, greenhouse gases are in the atmoshere and continue to rise every year -- even through the pandemic -- so higher average temperatures, extreme weather, and rising sea levels will inevitably all increase.?The worst is unquestionably ahead of us.?

A Hard Path to Sustainability

MFTF lays out a path -- a difficult but realistic path -- to a sustainable future and a strategy to bring carbon dioxide levels to under 350 ppm (we are currently at 412ppm and increasing).?The path is tough as so many people, corporations, and countries are resistant to meaningful changes.?

In the book, change happens but only as a result of environmental catastrophes, physical violence, collapsing markets, governmental intervention, and tireless work by millions of people.?

Robinson talks a great deal about political economy, my undergraduate major at UC Berkeley.?Whereas economics tends to take the political and legal world as a given, political economy asks more fundamental questions about the roles of the means of the production (the market), the role of political voice (government), the commons,?and the individual as a citizen, worker, and owner of capital.?Political economy is interested in comparative systems of politics, economics, and how to organize society.?In MFTF,?the European models with their emphases on collective action and communal good and the Chinese model with its state-control and long-term orientation prove more effective and adaptable than the American model with its weak and awkward government, strong corporations, open markets, short-term orientation, and emphasis on individual rights.?

I have always been tremendously proud of the American system of liberal democracy but watching our current political division and dysfunction, it's hard not to disagree with Robinson's presumption that we don't have the will to provide the leadership necessary to survive as a species.?Our nation is preoccupied with fighting with itself and denying scientific reality and not focused on the truly momentous threat that our industrial activity has made to the planet's ability to sustain humanity.?

Are We Up to the Climate Challenge??

As I follow the COP26 conference in Glasgow, it is obvious that many nation-states, including the United States, don't really want to change.?While President Biden wants to do something, his efforts are constrained by a resistant Congress including within his own party.?The leaders of other key nations, such as China and Russia, are no-shows at the conference or in their pledges.?

In MFTF Robinson describes a change process that is difficult -- always political, sometimes unilateral, and occasionally violent.??Unseen characters, in a secretive eco-terrorism organization called the Children of Kali, attack pipelines, cargo ships, fossil fuel facilities, and commercial airlines.?Assassins kill executives of companies that are destroying the planet.?The Children of Kali argue that they are protecting humanity, the planet, and the future from the real terrorists who are destroying it with their industrial activity.?They know their activities are illegal but they see violence against the equipment and people who are destroying the biosphere as a war for the planet and view their activities as both?ethical and necessary.?The end result is fear of engaging in fossil fuel activity, plummeting stock prices, and the collapse of polluting industries.?

Robinson appears torn about the ethics of engaging in physical violence to achieve sustainability, but I think he is probably right.?Human history suggests that people do not abandon their empires and wealth production unless they are forced to and eventually that means armed conflict.?The political will to challenge the status quo is not there yet but, I think, it is growing.?We will see if that will turns into violence.?