Kim Stanley Robinson – The Ministry for the Future – review by Anthony Nanson

The recent heatwave – more intense in North India, with temperatures in the mid-forties in Delhi – has put me in mind of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future, which begins with an extreme heatwave in North India.

When I reviewed Sixty Degrees and Counting, the final volume of Robinson’s trilogy about climate change, in Vector in 2008, I expressed disappointment that he’d shown us only the beginning of both the effects of climate change and humankind’s grappling with it, and also little of the scale of suffering to be expected in poorer countries. I have wondered if Robinson may have seen that review, because in The Ministry for the Future he narrates the struggle against global warming all the way through to the accomplishment of a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He also begins the novel by directly presenting the impact of the catastrophic heatwave in India.

I’ve tended to think about the impact of global warning in terms of indirect effects, such as flooding, crop failure, and desertification, arising in conjunction with other kinds of human impact on ecosystems. What Robinson depicts, in North India, is the direct impact of the heat itself when combined with sufficient humidity that the human body’s thermoregulatory system becomes unable to sustain life. In a few weeks 20 million people die. This kickstarts various responses. The Indian government unilaterally orders its air force to spray aerosols into the atmosphere. Ecoterrorists sabotage the airline and shipping industries by blowing up enough airliners and vessels to discourage carbon-fuelled long-range transport. More constructively, a new UN agency, the eponymous Ministry for the Future, galvanises collective action by the world’s governments.

The novel uses a collage technique – reminiscent of John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar – to pack in a huge quantity of ideas and explanations as well as psychologically sensitive narrative, including the experiences of refugees as well as UN officials such as the central protagonist, Mary Murphy, head of the Ministry of the Future. Robinson always bones up thoroughly for his novels, and this one contains lots of economic theory, made comprehensible, interesting, and relevant to the story. He also takes very seriously the political obstacle to hope which is posed by the implicit inclination of many privileged people and nations to ruthlessly prioritise their own interests and let other people die.

The crucial ingredients in turning things around are organising the central banks to create a new carbon currency, whose history is preserved by blockchain, that gets investors investing in green activities instead of destructive ones; massive drilling operations to extract the liquid water from under Antarctica’s glaciers to slow down their flow into the sea; and the terrorist operations that motivate the development of airships and revamped sailing ships. The novel’s multiple perspectives mean the author can’t be accused of advocating every view or action presented in the narrative. Structurally, however, the terrorism seems to be an important complement of the central bank action in moving the transition forwards.

Robinson does posit the need for a new religion as part of the transition, but this seems conceived more as social engineering than as genuinely spiritual. For me, any notion of progress that involves violence, whether warfare or terrorism, is uncountenanceable. That may mean that my own sense of hope is ultimately otherworldly, but I have no doubt that compassion for others necessitates the kind of political cooperation that Robinson depicts, and not the self-serving nationalism now so ascendant that pretends the ecological crisis doesn’t exist.

The Ministry for the Future has had an impact. It helped inspire the UN Summit of the Future in 2024, in which Robinson participated, and that summit’s Declaration on Future Generations. I would encourage anyone who cares about the future to read it - and even more those who don't!