âEVERYTHING is happening way faster than it happens in The Ministry for the Future,â says Kim Stanley Robinson of his latest novel, set in a world where an international agency is tasked with fighting for future generations on climate change. That vision was imagined mostly in 2018, which the US science fiction writer says now feels like âanother geological ageâ because so much has happened, from Donald Trumpâs election defeat to the covid-19 pandemic.
âClimate change seems to be the main topic on the table now, with all the storms, droughts, fires, freezings â the climate weirdness that has begun and looks like it will never cease in our lifetimes,â he says. Stanley Robinson â or Stan as he is often known â has repeatedly tackled climate change in his work, which is studded with heroic scientists and nods to scientific papers. His focus has increasingly moved beyond the problem of a rapidly warming world to what we should do about it. New York 2140, his 2017 novel, is a salutary warning of the risk of a drowned world if free market economics keep trumping the environment.
hops from Switzerland to India and Antarctica as it mulls every climate fix imaginable, from the titular agency to legal and financial incentives, all the way to activists who are so desperate that they resort to extremism.
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Real-world versions of the ministry, such as Walesâs , have suffered from a lack of clout. Does Stanley Robinson think his fictional one would work in reality?
âIt would be a great thing, but it wouldnât be simple or in any way easy to incorporate, because weâre so present-orientated,â he says. Moreover, it would be no panacea. âPeople would love to have the idea of a single fix, one thing will make everything right,â he says. âThatâs just not going to happen.â
Nor is he comfortable with the answer being violent extremism and illegal âblack opsâ, which some of the bookâs characters resort to. âIâm sure that thereâs going to be people around the world who are really angry in coming decades and they will commit violence hoping to make a better situation, calling it resistance,â he says. âI think it would be better if we managed to forestall that with legal reforms that are really fast.â
So where does hope lie? In top-down efforts such as international diplomacy, in grassroots local efforts by citizens and everything in between, says Stanley Robinson. âItâs an all-hands-on-deck situation. The idea of either/or, or oneâs better, oneâs worse, all that needs to be thrown over the side,â he says. It is for this reason that Stanley Robinson thinks research into geoengineering methods, such as temporarily reducing the amount of the sunâs energy reaching Earth, is worth pursuing. All that matters is what works and is fast, he says.
He is also clear that our economic systems need reform. âItâs one of the reasons we arenât reacting faster [on climate] than we are, because weâre locked into an ineffective system,â he says.
Stanley Robinson thinks the âcapaciousâ nature of novels makes the form good at tackling the subject of climate change. He says its two strengths are giving readers time travel â âyou are suddenly in a different time and space and really living itâ â and telepathy. âYou are in someone elseâs head,â he says. But there are limits. âYou can only push a novel so far. I donât even believe in futurism or futurology â Iâm a novelist.â
Yet he follows new science more closely than most novelists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeâs recent report on the state of climate change science was âthe ultimate in alarms going offâ, he says. âThe scientific community has been ringing that alarm since the late 90s. And the response has been slow and the resistance has been high.â But he fears the warning is being drowned by the noise of others, from pandemic disruption to âso-called political dividesâ, he says.
One of Stanley Robinsonâs worries is a real-world equivalent of the deadly heatwave that opens his latest novel. âI fear that something like that is going to happen,â he says. He suspects such an event might topple a government but fail to affect global action. âThe rest of the world will say, âoh, thatâs what happens in the tropicsâ. Weâre very good at ignoring stuff that happens elsewhere and saying âit canât happen to meâ.â
Stanley Robinson says he sees opportunity at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK, where he will give a speech. âMy hopes are high COP26 will come up with something striking. Progress will be made.â He is also a big fan of US president Joe Biden. âHe has been surprisingly good on climate. And I say this as a leftist.â
And what next? More climate change-themed novels are in the offing. Stanley Robinson has already written novels set in Antarctica, including The Ministry for the Future, and now he wants to head to the other pole. âIâm looking at the Arctic â can we keep an ice sheet over the Arctic? Itâs so important,â he says. If the idea grows into a story, it will explore a melting Arcticâs impact on governance, ecology and culture, not to mention the global climate as the regionâs reflectivity changes.
âYou can only push a novel so far. I donât believe in futurism or futurology â Iâm a novelistâ
Sixteen years ago, Stanley Robinson told 51¶ŻÂț he liked novels with happy endings. Does he hope for one on climate change? âWe could have a good 21st century, we could have a good dealing with climate change, we could have a good Anthropocene,â he says. âThis is what I charge the young science fiction writers with: you have to write that story so people can imagine it in advance â and then try for it.â
