GFI02: TRANSCENDING THE CLIMATE CRISIS with Kim Stanley Robinson

Show Summary

Tune into the Bold.ly Now Show featuring Kim Stanley Robinson, the Hugo and Nebula winning author of the Mars Trilogy. He is known as a realistic, science-based highly-literary science fiction author with over 20 books published. Stan's work often focuses on themes like sustainability, economic & social justice, climate change, and speculative futures. Today, we discuss these themes covered in Stan’s atypical sci-fi novel, The Ministry for the Future. Stan uses the book to demonstrate a vision of a new future for humanity and investigate what it might take to survive and transcend the climate crisis.

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Full Show Notes

The world is on track to miss the target of keeping the global average temperature within 2 degrees celsius of the warming limit. That means humans will have to adapt to a higher temperature. But, how much can we adapt? It's a well documented fact that humanity cannot survive a high heat index – a combination of high heat and high humidity. So, no matter the eco-modernist's view, humanity faces more of an emergency than we think.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel “The Ministry for the Future” runs wild with this idea. The book aims not just to transform people's thinking but also the culture itself. While his atypical approach to “novel writing” may seem borderline blasphemous, it's not something new. Stan believes he was inspired by the USA trilogy (by John Dos Passos) and Moby Dick (Herman Melville). Here, he talks in detail about his novel writing approach, entertainment VS education aspect, and how he manages to “tell” just as much as “show” to keep the novel fun and engaging for the readers.

We live in a nation-state global capitalist world. To write a realistic plausible novel, discussing capitalism and how it exacerbates the climate problem is inevitable. This system favors a few, but the climate is a zero-sum game. Paris agreement was, therefore, a great step in the right direction. We need better pricing of our relationship to the biosphere. Only then can we attempt to morph the system into better treatment of people and the biosphere.

Stan’s novel extracts a lot from the current economic conditions and gives us a viable picture of the future. The Carbon coin, introduced in the book, strikes a chord with the crypto-revolution currently taking place. Similarly, the targeted asymmetrical violence reminds of the occupy movement. Along the way, the book asks some very pertinent questions making a case for neoliberal capitalism. Unlike the often held view, neoliberal capitalism is not a hands-off approach to governance. It's still a very strong governance model that is indispensable for a socially just political economy.

It's a mixed picture in the world right now. On the bright side, we have the EU commission announcing plans for forced labor import ban, the successes of the 30 x 30 movement, the Paris accord and similar steps taken by governments in the USA, China and India. On the negative side, we have the reactionary capitalist businesses which exploit the natural resources to death and would not go without a fight. This discursive battle is but just one aspect of the larger political and physical battle.

Biological diversity is just important as human cultural...