Book Review: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Posted on October 22, 2024 at 6:31 am by Gene Ambaum
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Orbit, 2021. 9780316300148. 576pp.
I’ve listened to a lot of economics podcasts over the last few years, so the bits of this book that fascinated me the most were the parts where the Ministry for the Future tries to get the world to fund and adopt a carbon coin, which gives ongoing value to sequestering carbon vs. putting it into the atmosphere where it will contribute to climate change. Lots of fascinating meetings in the book, plus politics. There’s also a bit of terrorism and many, many climate refugees that need a place to live. At the center of it all is the head of the Ministry for the Future, who comes much more into focus as a character at the end of the book as she tours the world and considers it in light of how it is changing. It’s a novel with some hope for the short-term future of our planet if humanity is willing to come together to do the necessary work around removing carbon from the atmosphere. It offers no simple solutions, but it does show a few possible places to start.
I was daunted by the size of this book but I shouldn’t have been; once I started it I didn’t want to put it down.
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