The Ministry of the Future is more of a political project than a literary one. This is not because it lacks a story. If you are someone who wonders in the abstract what it will take for our global multinational capitalist world to avoid climate catastrophe, this is a story you should read. Because Robinson has done a very detailed analysis of all the challenges (everything from perceptual bias to the speed of glacier melt), and this is the story he sees as the path forward.

Following a “heat event” in India where the temperature rises to 135 degrees and 8 million people die, the Paris Climate Accord funds a new Agency “charged with defending all living creatures present and future who cannot speak for themselves, by promoting their legal standing and physical protection.” Dubbed The Ministry of the Future, it is headed by Mary Murphy, an Irish ex–minister of foreign affairs in the government of the Irish Republic, and before that a union lawyer. Mary leads a motley crew of specialists who fight for the future. There is a political wing, a legal wing, an IT/AI group, and a variety of scientists. But as they face resistance at every turn, it is the black ops military group who make the biggest gains. Drones attack all fossil fuel driven airplanes, downing enough planes in one day that people are afraid to travel. Ditto with cargo freighters. Alternate solar vehicles are soon developed.

But this is just one piece of a very complicated puzzle. Indeed Robinson warns us early on about “monocausotaxophilia” the love of single ideas that explain everything, as one of humanity’s most common cognitive errors. While the novel centers around Mary Murphy and her struggles with the Ministry, and Frank May, the sole survivor of one town in India after the heat event, it is peppered with different voices and different projects. We come to see that effecting enough change on a global scale has to be both bottom up and top down. In one chapter we join scientists in the Arctic Circle working with oil companies to repurpose their drilling and pumping technology to pump melting water from beneath the glaciers on to the surface where it will re-freeze. The speed of the melting glaciers and the rapid rise of the sea level is seen as one of the most immediate crises to solve. In another chapter we join young protesters who en mass converge on Paris, putting a stop to business as usual and forming alliances with local residents who feed them and provide temporary infrastructure.

It is clear there is no easy solution.

One of my favorite aspects to the book is Robinson’s thoughtful observations about the quirks of human nature which make it difficult to perceive the problem, much less imagine a solution that can “scale up” enough to be impactful. There are long passages about indexes and measuring systems and how they can help convey and relativize data.

“There are various ways of indicating inequality more anecdotally (perhaps we could say in more human terms) than such indexes. The three richest people in the world possess more financial assets than all the people in the forty-eight poorest countries added together. The wealthiest one percent of the human population owns more than the bottom seventy percent.”

Ultimately it is probably not surprising that the solution which is most effective is an economic one, which provides financial rewards for capturing carbon emissions. I won’t go into the details here (read the book!) but it also is a very complex, multivalent plan.

I assumed as I read the book that the science was factual and looked for an appendix which would give more information about the various movements, methods, and manipulations he describes. However there is no bibliography or set of resources. I found this surprising and a little frustrating. If the project here is envisioning solutions to climate change, why not be as explicit as possible?

In spite of this criticism I think the message is clear and this is a book we all should be reading. As Jonathan Lethem blurbs on the cover “this is the best science fiction non-fiction novel I have ever read.” The narrative commences is 2023, and the social events and political figures of our time are still present. The urgency of the novel is underscored by its proximity to our present day. This will happen, Robinson is trying to show us, and it will happen soon.

Although this is not an easy read, it is one I think everyone should attempt. It has images I cannot stop thinking about (or talking about – to the annoyance of my daughter who complained “if you describe that heat event in India one more time…it didn’t even happen!”) Yet. The book makes a compelling case that these futures are imminent unless we take a lot of radical steps right away. So I hope others are moved to read this book and follow its path forward, or at least talk about it enough to make those around you listen. For all of these reasons I rate this book 5👍 out of 5👍.