Book Review: The Ministry for the Future
I became aware of this book while listening to Radio New Zealand on my way to visit in-laws in Tokoroa. The author, Kim Stanley Robinson, was interviewed by Kim Hill and his answers impressed me.
The book is a work of science fiction and follows the story of Mary Murphy, the director of the ministry, as she attempts to put into practice the mission of the ministry, which is to be an advocate for future generations, that don’t have a voice. Her story is closely linked to Frank, the sole survivor of the catastrophe described below. I am not usually very interested in works of fiction, but this held my interest and kept me reading through 563 pages. There are more than 100 chapters, often very short, and with a great variety of narrators.
The book begins with a tragic event in India. A combination of high temperatures, high humidity, and a power cut because of network overload due to many air conditioning units operating at full load, leads to the deaths of possibly 20 million people. My Zoology professor stated that we humans could comfortably sit in an oven and watch a chicken being roasted next to us. However, this was only true if the humidity was kept very low, allowing copious sweating to evaporate and cool the humans. The situation is quite different when humidity is high. Robinson was unwilling to commit to a particular temperature, but it seems like somewhere around 35 degrees Celsius with high humidity is enough to kill humans. That is the scenario that Robinson began his novel with. A shock tactic, the more so because most of us don’t realise how vulnerable we humans are to high temperature and humidity.
Frank survives but suffers from very bad PTSD. Mary’s first task is to respond to the Indian catastrophe. Her ministry has not much power or funding but is able to have conversations with governments, powerful people, and experts from around the world. The Indian catastrophe resulted in a change of government, a desire to take the emergency step of spraying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to initiate a temporary cooling, rather like Mt Pinatubo.
The novel explores the operation of the Ministry and other options for combating climate change. Mary Murphy gets to hear many arguments, pro and con, for the options under discussion. Often, the situation represented is exactly our current one, giving the novel a special relevance. For example, I was struck by the one-page summary of the situation in Greece, in which the financial institutions insisted on loan re-payment, at the cost of impoverishing the Greek people, because they didn’t have a viable Plan B and had to agree to their terms, requiring devastating cuts to public spending, superannuation entitlements, and causing high unemployment.
One of the author’s unconventional ideas is that we have to pay the oil producers to keep the oil in the ground. It is counter-intuitive to pay already wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia for not producing oil. Another possibility is to re-purpose oil drilling equipment for extracting water from underneath Antarctic glaciers.
Frank tries to join an ecoterrorist group, the Children of Kali, but is declined. However, he wants to do something, reflecting the urgency of the situation, so he takes Mary Murphy prisoner and harangues her with the need to do more. Meanwhile, Mary is trying to get the banks to agree to a carbon coin, one coin for every 1,000 tons of CO2 saved or sequestered.
When 60 passenger planes are shot down by drones, killing 7,000, the bottom falls out of the flying industry. There are some hints that such violence is the responsibility of a black ops wing of the Ministry. Drones were also used to infect cows with Mad Cow Disease, rendering them unfit for human consumption. Violence was not limited to those fighting for the environment. A bomb goes off overnight at the Ministry headquarters, so Mary is given police protection.
Due to the warming climate, Antarctic glaciers were moving ten times faster than previously. One of the best schemes was to pump water up from below the glaciers, so that they grind to a halt and stick to the underlying bedrock, dramatically slowing their movement.
Some said that we need a new religion, a religion of the future, or perhaps just the oldest religion. This finds its climax towards the end of the book, when three billion people sing earth’s praises together on Gaia Day.
Laurie Chisholm