Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Ministry for the Future' -- Science and Fiction: Envisioning Climate Action

10/8/20
In this virtual event, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson will read from and discuss his new novel, The Ministry for the Future, which presents a fundamentally hopeful vision of a near-future world striving to overcome the climate crisis. After his talk, Robinson will join a panel of distinguished Rutgers faculty, including the journalist/activist Naomi Klein, international environmental lawyer Cymie Payne, and environmental humanist Jorge Marcone. The panel, moderated by Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Director and climate scientist Robert Kopp, will discuss the novel and its vision. This event is hosted by the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Rutgers Climate Institute at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestselling author and recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt and 2312. In 2008, he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, a Puffin Writing Fellow at Type Media Center and is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.
Cymie Payne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Ecology and the School of Law - Camden. She is known for her work on global governance of the environment and natural resources and the consequent evolution of international law, with a focus on climate change, ocean resources and protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict.
Jorge Marcone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and a Core Faculty Member in the Program in Comparative Literature. His field of specialization is the Environmental Humanities, as they inform, or are informed by cultural archives, repertoires, and interventions from Latin America and Spain.
Robert Kopp is Director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, and as a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University. His research focuses on past and future sea-level change, on the interactions between physical climate change and the economy, and on the use of climate risk information in decision making.

[@stormymangham5518]

Excellent book! Currently prototyping solar thermal energy solutions with a struggling family business. 😌 Nice to see that people care about the current climate crisis. It hinges on socioeconomic growth and increasing quality of life, unfortunately fossil fuels are the easiest method for nations and governments to achieve those goals. We need innovative leaders to provide carbon sequestration and sustainable energy modalities to promote any real change.

[@williamb6845]

The book is so scattergun in many ways. Which might be seen as a fault but the mind bending reach of its world vision is also one of its benefits. You just can't ignore it. It reaches deep into our malaise, as it's so complex. But solutions are quite simple: dramatically increase the price of fuel, keep the fossil fuels in the ground, bring capitalism to a halt, rethink all travel and industrial activity of any kind, start again. So simple. Ha ha!

[@derekmiller8564]

Skip one hour to get to the information.

[@bostoncommonterry]

Air travel already Changes the color of the sky 1 billion fly 1 billion have no shoes

[@Adam-Flint]

I have mixed feelings about the book. Many qualities: I like the dispersed format of the story, some aspects of the style, some useful reminders such as "climate change is real and caused by humans," or "we are in the sixth mass extinction," or "this is the Jevons paradox." But too many things are plain wrong. Chapter 56 in the book: "The US and several other big countries had withdrawn from the court’s jurisdiction (The Intertnational Criminal Court of The Hague) after negative rulings against their citizens." whereas in our real world: "The General Assembly (of the UN) convened a conference in Rome in June 1998, with the aim of finalizing the treaty to serve as the Court's statute. On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to seven, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S., and Yemen." Quite another reality... Chapter 55 in the book, writing about France: ...the Commune of 1848... No. The Revolution of 1848 (the third one) from February 22 to February 24, 1848, led to the abdication of King Louis Philippe and to the foundation of the Second Republic. The Commune was in France a Parisian insurrection against the Third Republic, from March 18 to May 28, 1871. The two are never confused, neither in French nor in English. When you know Switzerland, it is kind of hilarious to see it portrayed as a welcoming country for refugees, and in Chapter 47, you might be led to believe that the Swiss banking industry is an old thing of the past that has little to do with Swiss prosperity (LOL). And about Germany and France, chapter 50: "...the rest of the world was irrelevant, or at most instruments to be used." What should one say, then, maybe, about the USA? About China? etc. But the worst thing is the substance of the book. The reader might be led to believe that, yes, the climate situation is very, very bad (it starts like that in Chapter 1), but don't you worry too much, "clean energy", geoengineering and human goodwill will save us... in some decades, when many scientists today estimate we may have already crossed irreversible tipping points, when James Hansen writes "Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone - after slow feedbacks operate - is about 10°C." An increase of 5°C is generally considered beyond the point of extinction for humans. So false hope not based in reality is noxious, an anesthesic against action. Really, this is the only kind of book our contemporary fiction literature has to offer other than apocalyptic/survivalist, Rambo type, or stupid zombie series? At the most defining time in human history, maybe the end of humanity, I'd like to give this excerpt of "Where is the fiction about climate change" by Amitav Ghosh, in The Guardian (the whole article is online and worth reading). "In a substantially altered world, when sea-level rise has swallowed the Sundarbans and made cities such as Kolkata, New York and Bangkok uninhabitable, when readers and museum-goers turn to the art and literature of our time, will they not look, first and most urgently, for traces and portents of the altered world of their inheritance? And when they fail to find them, what can they do other than to conclude that ours was a time when most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognising the realities of their plight? Quite possibly, then, this era, which so congratulates itself on its self-awareness, will come to be known as the time of the Great Derangement." As global warming and overshoot don't happen in a vacuum but are descending on our society with politics, here is an excerpt from "Parable of the Talents" by Octavia Butler (1998): "Jarret was inaugurated today. We listened to his speech-short and rousing. Plenty of “America, America, God shed his grace on thee,” and “God bless America,” and “One nation, indivisible, under God,” and patriotism, law, order, sacred honor, flags everywhere, Bibles everywhere, people waving one of each. His sermon-because that’s what it was-was from Isaiah, Chapter One. “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.” Adam Flint, author of "Mona," on Amazon.

[@kazparzyxzpenualt8111]

Thank you for your corrective comments and admonishment of this book. I know this is a late to the sad party chiming in but the general raves the author has been showered with for this work of his may be coming from the ever present blind side of reality. If BlackRock, StateStreet and Vangard and every government in their pocket don't reverse engines this spaceship is going to crash.

[@Adam-Flint]

@@kazparzyxzpenualt8111 Right you are. The most dispiriting thing with this book was the acclamation of the "consensus" that brought humanity in its overshoot situation in the first place. And the desert of honest, straight talk in contemporary literature about this topic. False hope not based in our reality is the worst thing and assures passivity in our climate emergency. The same way most media acclaimed as "breakthrough" the results of the last COP in Dubai.

[@jamesbelcher9588]

7:06 Book talk begins

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

human choice decentralization, God's kingdom central authority