Be informed

People have different ways of coping with the climate crisis. Quite a few people just ignore it. Others deny it and actively seek to make it worse. Others expect someone or something else to fix it; surely there is a technological fix? I wake up each morning with the challenge in my head. What can I do more to change things?

A response has been to seek solace in art, theatre and music. Indeed, I have a playlist. Every visit to a gallery or exhibition is filtered through the climate lens. And now it is novels – not a medium that I have indulged much. I was never a great reader of novels as a child. When I grew up I immersed myself in non-fiction and newspapers. There is a point to my sudden interest. I have an objective. But first I have to read what are seen as the significant books of fiction that deal with the climate crisis. I also have to learn how to critique literature. This is not a skill that I currently possess. Please bear that in mind when reading. Also note, there are countless spoilers in this text.

My first book to review is Kim Stanley Robinson’s, The Ministry for the Future. It is an epic. The paperback has a small font and has 563 pages. There are two main characters. There is a lot of implicit violence. It is also a book unusual in explaining economic and innovation concepts; for example, discounted cash flow (p 131); the Jevons Paradox (p 165); Gini Coefficient/equality measures (p73); MMT (Ch73); Bretton Woods (Ch50) and the International criminal court (Ch56), etc. There are also free lessons in glaciology and geoengineering amongst other scientific concepts.

The first of the book’s two main characters, Frank May, is an aid worker in Uttar Pradesh. It is 6am and the temperature is already 38 degrees and the humidity 35 per cent. We know that heat and humidity are a lethal combination. And so it proved. When the power failed all life-saving air conditioning shut off. During the course of the next few hours 2 million people died. What we learn from this is that 2 million people is the trigger for action. No state can sit back when 2 million of its citizens die from what is not a natural disaster.

The Indian Government’s near first response was to execute a programme of geoengineering – depositing particulates into the upper atmosphere to deflect the sun and cool the surface. This contravened the Paris Agreement of 2015. No state should unilaterally undertake a programme of geoengineering where the impacts are unknown and cross-border. But they did it.

Frank May improbably survives, but his whole life is haunted by the experience. His post traumatic stress disorder impacts on those around him. His focus is on bringing about change by whatever means. He makes contact with an organisation called The Children of Kali, a direct action grouping that targets the world’s climate villains; namely, those who caused climate change and those who perpetuate it. The bosses of oil companies require 24 hour protection. The owners of private jets do not sleep easy. Diesel ships and aeroplanes will sink or crash on the so-called “accident day”. That, at least, sees an end to mass aviation.

Rejected by the Children of Kali, Frank kidnaps the book’s second main character, Mary Murphy, the head of the recently established UN entity, The Ministry for the Future based in Zurich. He is not very good at kidnapping since he allows the kidnapping to take place in her own apartment, one which is monitored by the local police, she being a target – by the right for threatening their profits or the left for not doing enough to threaten their profits. Before the arrival of the police, Frank confronts her with the “left” position. The Ministry is not doing enough to change things. It is incremental, transparent and easily captured. He tells her about the Children of Kali and the kind of action needed to bring about real change.

On the arrival of the police, Frank disappears through a back window and goes underground until he is eventually apprehended by the police after defending migrants from an attack by local fascists – naturally, immigration is a real flashpoint, and immigrants very much a target. Frank is sent to prison for the kidnapping and his involvement in the death of a man on the beach whom he hit with a large piece of wood.

Scary though the the kidnap experience was, Mary knew that Frank was right. She discussed with her Chief of Staff, Badim Bahadur, whether the Ministry had any black ops, not dissimilar to the Children of Kali. He was not about to disclose any activities of the sort, but the very reticence suggested that the Ministry had such an arm. This, of course, leads to questions about who is responsible for what? Is the Ministry sinking ships or the Children of Kali, or some other radical outfit with little faith in mainstream politics?

A core vehicle for change is the carbon coin. It is discussed extensively in the book. It has key features; for example it has to be supported by central banks, is securitised by the creation of long-term bonds, it is rendered by blockchain technology. It works whereby: “Every ton [sic] of carbon not burned, or sequestered in a way that would be certified to be real for an agreed-upon time, one century being typical…you are given a carbon coin…the central banks would guarantee it at a certain minimum price, they would support a floor so it couldn’t crash. But also it could rise above the floor as people get a sense of its value, in the usual way of currencies in the currency exchange markets.” (p174). It is a form of carbon quantitative easing. And it is a market-driven mechanism.

The carbon coin is based on a paper (actually a series of papers/essays) by Delton Chen (p172 – https://tinyurl.com/4c27dj9a) author of the key paper: Chen, D. B., van der Beek, J., & Cloud, J. (2017). Climate mitigation policy as a system solution: addressing the risk cost of carbon. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 7(3), 233–274. https://tinyurl.com/5ervkk74

The cover brands the “Ministry…” as “one of Barak Obama’s favourite books of the year”. We all know how important that endorsement has been in recent years. Whilst this may be good for sales, I am not sure if the scenario presented has the legs the author and Obama think and hope for. The first part of the book is apocalyptic, for sure. Lots of bad things happen to people; obviously the heatwave that starts the book results in mass death, but the terrorism/state-sponsored terrorism takes its toll, too. We do not ever get to know who did what. Curiously, the terrorism seems to go without investigation. We do find out who may be behind much of the terror, however; namely, brown people.

The second half of the book simply reassures. Yes, the climate crisis remains present, but the trajectory starts to go in the right direction. Global emissions are cut seriously, not least by the incentive provided by the carbon coin. The scientist innovate in ways that give hope. Though this part is difficult for lay readers like myself to judge relative to the carbon coin initiative (which has at least been subject to peer review). Some of the glacier adaptations do seem fanciful not just scientifically, but also geopolitically. Admittedly, the book was written before the second Trump administration and the current phase of the Ukraine conflict, but even before then, it would have seemed optimistic.

I suppose my biggest misgiving is Robinson’s belief/hope that already-occurring warming can be reversed. Tipping points are recognised, but they do seem to be glossed over. Migration is recognised, of course, but it is still a “problem” to be handled by efficient bureaucracy. There is, equally, not much thought given to food security, biodiversity and shifting global alliances. Without the security of world order, much of what is described in the second half of the book is unlikely to be feasible. And I have no confidence that that world order will be maintained. For example, I worry particularly about food security, centred as it is now around global value chains, limited genetic diversity of core foodstuffs such as grain, rice, bananas, etc. Interested readers should read Tim Lang. Hungry people do not play be the rules. And because of the trajectory, the second half of the book loses its momentum, suspense and mission. For the final few chapters I was waiting for something to happen. But it did not because the author had already determined that the world had been saved and that one of the main characters can actually retire and travel the world in an airship! The book, therefore, has a very long and unrewarding tail.

Anyone needing more – and there is more – should read clever review using an ideal-type approach to criticism, see the work of Solarpunk – Hacker. Worth a good few minutes of your time.