Introduction
The Ministry of the Future is a climate fiction novel written and published in 2020 by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. It is set in the near future following a subsidiary body developed under the Paris Agreement. Their missions advocated for the global future generations of populations with valid rights as those for current generations. While various projects were pursued in the novel, the impacts of climate change were ascertained as the most significant.
The book’s plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the leader of the supposed title, and an American aid employee, Frank May, who is traumatized by encounters with deadly heatwaves in India (Robinson 18). The novel accounts for future events and ideologies like economics and ecology, discussing a host of climate change methods, policies, and technologies to be used soon in the real world. Geoengineering emerged as one of the ethical dilemmas in The Ministry of the Future besides environmental terrorism.
Main body
In The Ministry of the Future, killer heatwaves caused scarring experiences that resulted in experts working on a global system to make fundamental changes. The novel described geoengineering in aspects that include solar engineering, harnessing the sun’s power, stabilization of sea levels, a new age of sails, and the carbon coin. Geoengineering was started by the Indian government, as evident by Badim Bahadur, who tells Mary, “You must have heard that the Indian government is beginning a solar radiation management action,” (Robinson 39). India of The Ministry of the Future adopted a radical mitigation program about climate change, the initial and most provocative element of which is a project to saturate the nation’s skies (Robinson 39).
The project used Airforce to spread a delicate sheen of Sulphur dioxide particulates that can reflect sunlight into space to permeate the skies. The Indian government began the implementation of geoengineering following a horrific description of the Indian heatwave that happened in the summer of 2025, killing a million individuals (Robinson 38). The project provided a natural blanketing effect to lower global temperatures by a degree for two or one year.
In the novel, subtleties surfaced such that the geoengineering projects proceeded with basic ramshackle technology, where missions were carried out with an old fleet that ran a constant relay of numerous thousand tasks over a few months. The fleet was to pump particulates in the upper atmosphere through fuel lines (Robinson 39). However, despite the missions being desperately improvised, they were to work because sufficient Sulphur would be emitted to deflect incoming sunlight sufficient to lower atmospheric temperatures in India and prevent the recurrence of the heatwave. As stated in the novel, “geoengineering isn’t always just a fantasy. The Indians did that sulfur dioxide thing and that worked. Temperatures dropped for years after that,” (Robinson 186).
In the novel, Robinson changes to become an entirely reusing solar powerhouse that operates by turning its abundant sunlight to use. Solar fields replaced the decommissioned coal-fired energy plants and created biofuels by drawing water out of the air and hydrogen out of the water (Robinson 211). Solar fields received investment boosts while construction of new coal plants began dropping drastically. However, the author described that the root of the problem appeared to be fossil fuel capitalism. He asserted that “…. the richest 2% of the world’s population have decided to give up on the pretense that ‘progress’………can be achieved for all eight billion of the world’s people” (Robinson 68).
A new age of sail emerges, showing the transition of ships and planes to new models from diesel-powering, whereby ship–driven sails have the potential for harnessing sunlight and wind, a new generation of airstrips (Robinson 38). The first naval inventions on older ships have the capabilities of harnessing solar energy received by solar panels that are fitted on giant roofs. Sails made of photovoltaic fabrics can capture both light and wind and generate electricity that causes propulsion.
Furthermore, besides consideration of India’s killer heat, Robinson considered stabilization of relentless erosion of Antarctic and arctic ice layers as their loss devastates because of the critical role they play in stabilizing global temperatures. The increased sliding of Antarctica glaciers into the sea, the author asserts, has threatened a catastrophic rise in sea levels (Robinson 57). As the author states in project slowdown, they were to “thump back down onto bedrock and slow down to the grind-it-out speed that used to be normal” to prevent the catastrophic rise of sea levels (Robinson 184). Engineers of Robinson found improvised solutions that are exhausting, costly, and inelegant but adequate to curb the rising erosion of glaciers.
Arresting glacial erosion in Antarctica proved more challenging; thereby, the author dismisses most suggested solutions of pumping water back onto the mainland of Antarctica during the melting of glaciers because of impracticality and cost. The book describes a solution whose root cause is the problem, which entails accumulating water below the glaciers as meltwater runs down cracks in the Antarctica ice (Robinson 55). The glaciers get lifted with trapped water that lubricates them and detaches them from the bedrock affixed. Scientists work by pumping the water out underneath to force it to resettle on the ocean floor, which is enormous to handle and requires the use of technologies.
In The Ministry for the Future, the use of organic methods for agriculture was depicted to reduce the use of chemicals energizing the soil’s natural capacity to sequester and soak up carbon. The revolution in the skies is demonstrated by battery-powered electric planes that replace old fuel-powered models, and airships become standard modes of air travel that emerge from the shadows. The book has a storyline that follows a long struggle to convince the world’s central banks about rewiring the international financial system to direct capital away from fossil fuels (Robinson 60).
The Climate crisis turned around with the dropping of carbon dioxide, which the novel assert is a result of the “greening of the ocean shallows with kelp” (Robinson 446) due to carbon coin and “drawdown efforts” (Robinson 455). Successful climate crises triggered shocks to global markets resulting in the introduction of a new green digital currency, known as carbon coin, that was disbursed to organizations as proof of their shifting away from hydrocarbons. However, for Robinson introduction of the carbon tax was not enough; it required investors to go long on civilization.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Robinson asserts that climate change is not yet fixed as the world is permanently scarred by carbon emissions and other pollutants whose impacts will be realized for centuries to come. The novel describes geoengineering methods and encourages people to use ingenuity and technologies for decisive actions utilizing finite resources more wisely for the good of all humanity. The novel tells the financial initiative as the most significant innovation, regarded as the carbon coin forming a new green currency. The Ministry for the Future explores creative solutions while avoiding monocausal perceptive by clearly pointing out the need to employ concerted actions through paths that reinforce each other to tackle climate change.
Work Cited
Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future: A Novel. Orbit, 2020.