The Ministry for the Future

Blockchain is a set of records that are encrypted, distributed, and stored across many databases. Blockchain serves as the backbone of digital currencies, such as carbon coin, because it doesn’t need a central government to determine its value or keep records of it; anyone can see these records. In addition, any currency transactions recorded via blockchain are such that the source of currency is always traceable because those records cannot be changed once they are stored. Mary and the ministry use blockchain as a tool to encourage uptake of carbon coin and to end the free movement of untaxed money by people profiting from carbon-emitting activities. Blockchain is thus one of the technological tools the ministry uses to end capitalism.

Carbon coin is a currency minted by the central banks for every ton of carbon a person or company keeps in the ground or removes from the atmosphere for at least a century. Carbon coin is one of the tools the ministry uses to force business interests to take into account the impact of their behaviors on people of the future. When political and economic instability make carbon coin a viable alternative to other currencies, Mary and the ministry use it as an incentive to end economic activities that damage the environment.

To sequester carbon is to use technology or natural processes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere where it can heat up temperatures or to prevent it from entering the atmosphere in the first place. One of the primary goals of the ministry is to encourage enough carbon sequestration to slow and reverse rises in global temperatures. Many of the first-person chapters are examples of people using agricultural practices, science, or alternate industrial practices to help sequester carbon.

Climate justice is the notion that people with lots of resources should bear most of the cost of addressing climate change. The rationale for this position is that the economic advantages that make countries like the US prosperous are derived from activities that damaged the climate since the Industrial Revolution and continue to this day. To now call for countries in the process of industrializing with fossil fuels is an unfair imposition that will condemn them to fewer economic resources permanently. Because richer countries have the economic means to pay for research on cleaner fuels, they should bear the cost of doing so and provide funds for poorer countries to do so as well. In the novel, climate justice occurs when Indigenous groups in the Amazon get a substantial amount of carbon coins as soon as Brazil adopts carbon coin; this bounty acknowledges that they have borne the brunt of negative climate impacts of the country and have used agricultural and conservation practices that protect the environment.

Now deprecated by international bodies like the International Monetary Fund, the terms developing nation and developed nation are part of a categorization scheme whereby countries are labeled depending on their level of industrialization. Developed nations typically are former colonial powers or contemporary powers like the United States, which has power because it holds much of the debt for poorer nations. International bodies reject systems of categorization because developed has positive connotations that imply development is a good thing, when in fact this development has led to irreversible ecological damage in many instances. In the novel, Robinson uses these terms, but he is also attentive to the environmental and human costs of assuming that development and efficiency that allows greater exploitation of natural resources.

In the novel, the discount rate is the degree to which contemporary investors minimize the impact of their actions and investments on future generations. It is more profitable to pursue short-term profits that might pollute the environment far in the future, for example. In the present moment of the novel, money and investments fail to take into account the suffering and ecological destruction that carbon-emitting economic activities cause. For example, a plastic toy that costs one dollar today would actually cost a lot more if the ecologic damage caused by its manufacturing, movement to a market, and storage in a landfill were included. One of the goals of the Ministry for the Future is to make these actual costs apparent.

When a borrower accepts a lender’s lower evaluation of an asset used as collateral for a loan, this is called taking a haircut. In the novel, Mary strongarms billionaires profiting from inequality and carbon-emitting activities to accept millions in carbon coin in place of billions in current currency. The investors take these haircuts because it is obvious that their current currency will be worthless once ecological collapse destabilizes governments.

Hegemony means dominance, and American hegemony is the dominance the United States has exercised in the global economy and politics since it emerged from World War II with an intact infrastructure and as the creditor to most poorer nations. The decision to force these poorer nations to repay debts incurred by former elites has kept such countries in debt according to the narrator of Chapter 49, leading to a new form of colonialism or imperialism. In Chapter 94, Mary and others at the climate conference quietly conclude that the United States’ unwillingness to surrender this hegemony is one of the main impediments to addressing intractable problems like global inequality. Mary’s work to counter this power makes her and people like Tatiana a target for assassination.

Jevon’s Paradox is the postulate that increased efficiency derived from technological advancements leads to more consumption of natural resources rather than a reduction in use of these sources. In the novel, the economic philosopher argues that this paradox means relying on technology to reduce carbon emissions is not a realistic way through climate change. In addition, the philosopher argues that efficiency as an unquestioned good is a result of cognitive biases that are rooted in capitalism. If the planet is to survive, good inefficiency like leaving fossil fuels in the ground or using slower but more ecologically friendly agricultural processes must be embraced. This thinking shapes the ministry’s commitment to ending global capitalism that values profit over people.

Keynesian economics is a school of economics based on the works of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who argues in his work that government interventions, such as deficit spending and tax cuts during depressions and raising taxes during economic booms, are appropriate tools for managing the economy on a national level. He thus rejects unregulated, free-market capitalism because it will lead to longer depressions. In the novel, the Ministry for the Future relies on this perspective initially to convince central banks and governments to intervene in economies built on carbon-emitting fuels and economic activities.

The central tenet of the Leopoldian land ethic is that land and the environment are in community with humans and thus deserve all the protection and care enlightened political philosophies typically assign to humans. A quote from Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac (1949), “what’s good is what’s good for the land” (166), is an important part of the ethos that emerges during the 2040s in response to climate change. The projects supported by the ministry and individuals are ecologically sustainable ones that are beneficial for nature and humans overall.

A tension in the novel, however, is that some things that are good for the land, such as habitat corridors, might not be good for humans in the short term because they cause suffering, such as forced displacement, as happens to the residents of a Montana town described in Chapter 87. In addition, ecoterrorist groups like the Children of Kali use violence because they believe such actions are “good” so long as they protect the environment. While Robinson acknowledges these challenges, the end of the novel offers no resolution to these conflicts.

Modern Monetary Theory, which Robinson describes in detail in Chapter 73, is a school of economics built for the climate crisis. In the world of the novel, proponents of MMT believe that government policies and spending should encourage protection of the environment by making carbon-emitting activities too expensive to engage in, and guarantee jobs with livable wages for everyone who wants to work: “Its foundational axiom was that the economy works for humans, not humans for the economy” (365) according to the narrator. The increasing acceptance of MMT by governments in the late 2030s and early 2040s spells the end of capitalism and respect for traditional economics.

Neoliberalism is a form of capitalism in which markets are mostly unregulated by governments and governments relinquish or rarely exercise the power to tax or manage services to citizens. In neoliberal capitalism, anything that enhances global trade is good, and countries that lack the wealth to extract debt payments from its citizens should embrace austerity measures, even if they cause human suffering. Economists at the Ministry for the Future believe this form of capitalization is incapable of engaging in the spending and interventions it will take to address climate change. Mary and her teams conclude that ending capitalism is the only way to win the battle for Earth.

Neocolonialism is a relation of power in which a poorer country that owes debt to a former colonizing country/ rich country that is a creditor loses control over its economy and government. Decisions within the poorer country are ones that benefit the creditor/former colonizer rather than the citizens of the poorer country. The economists of the Ministry for the Future, Badim, and leaders like Chandra see the United States and countries in the European Union as drivers of policies that condemn poorer countries to more poverty and lower quality of life once heat waves and other extreme weather events strike.

India responds by uncoupling itself from the carbon-based economy in which its natural resources and people are eaten up by Western demand for electronics. This New India, in which clean energy, collectivist governing structures, and unilateral climate engineering projects prevail, is a source of conflict that drives several of the subplots in the novel.

Quantitative easing occurs when a central bank injects money by buying bonds. The goal of this policy is to encourage people to spend more to avoid a recession or depression. In Ministry for the Future, the ministry encourages central banks to engage in carbon quantitative easing by creating carbon coin, money designed to encourage activities that decrease or prevent economic activities that emit carbon into the atmosphere. The ministry struggles for decades to get the central banks and investors to accept carbon coin, however, but spiraling climate change effects and instability that comes from global inequality eventually lead to the adoption of carbon coin and allow the ministry to win their conflict against capitalists.

Sometimes called “The Paris Treaty” or “the climate change treaty,” the Paris Climate Accords (2015) are a set of agreements designed to address negative effects of climate change, especially the rise in global temperatures due to carbon emissions. The treaty is the legal basis for the brief of the Ministry for the Future, a fictional body tasked with advocating on behalf of the future generations who will feel the impacts if the goals in the treaty are not met. The treaty is a prime example of rule of law, where diplomacy instead of war and violence are used to ensure survival. Mary’s struggles to be an effective voice for the future stem from the fact that the treaty comprises words, but no force behind those words to make countries fulfill their promises in the treaty. Robinson thus portrays the treaty as a weak beginning that nevertheless allows countries to stave off the worst effects of out-of-control climate change.

Named for French economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) and Capital and Ideology (2019), a Piketty tax is designed to apply high rates (90%, for example) of taxation to wealth over the hundreds of millions to diminish inequality. The rationale for such a tax is that people who have large amount of money are free riders who make money from collective infrastructure like the internet without sharing their profits with the workers who produce their wealth.

In Chapter 64 of the novel, the economics philosopher speculates that winning the battle against climate change and inequality will require taxing the extremely wealthy out of existence. In free-market capitalism, the ultrawealthy are hoarding what people need for survival; their decisions are ones that prioritize their own comfort over the right of future people to have a livable climate. A conflict that emerges in the novel is whether the extremely wealthy will be reined using rule of law or violence. In the end, it takes both changes in monetary policy and violence to lessen the power of the extremely wealthy.

A “Pinatubo” is a form of climate engineering whereby people introduce enough sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. These particles form a haze that reflects sunlight back out of the atmosphere and thus lowers the temperature of the planet. Named after Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano that erupted in 1991 and caused the lowering of global temperatures with its sulfurous ash, the Pinatubo is one of India’s first unilateral acts to address climate change after the heat wave kills many people.

For Mary, India’s decision to execute the Pinatubo shows that the failure of high-income countries to live up to their agreements in the Paris Climate Accord might destroy the ability of the treaty to encourage effective global response to climate change. Her sense of urgency and willingness to skirt or even violate the law is the result of her realization.

In a Socratic dialogue, a teacher poses a question to a student or group of students with the goal of getting the student to use reason and reflection to examine assumptions more critically. Unlike a traditional lecture, in which knowledge flows in one direction from teacher to student, Socratic dialogue allows truth to emerge as a result of engagement with others.

Robinson uses Socratic dialogue in Chapters 17, 38, 90, and 99. In these dialogues, an economics or political science professor poses questions to a student, but in each case, the student leads the professor to question the professor’s own assumptions about economics and politics and does so using crude terms or even through ridicule of the professor. The upending of the usual power relations between student and professor reflects Robinson’s disdain for traditional economics and political science—especially in terms of how they address the problem of climate change. The irreverence of the student reinforces a dynamic in the novel, which is adequate responses to climate change frequently come through attacks on authority.

Subaltern is an adjective applied to people who are subordinates in a colonial, neocolonial, or postcolonial power structure or “Others” who are silenced, displaced, and discounted politically and culturally. Many characters in the novel arrive at a critique of capitalism and inequality through the lens of subalternity. Mary and Badim, from Ireland and Nepal/India, respectively, come to focus on ending global capitalism and achieving climate justice as a result of their training in diplomacy but also from the personal experience of living in the aftermath of British colonialism. Mary also identifies “Women as Other” (484) as one of the intractable problems despite the successes of the 2040s. Oppression based on gender cuts across national boundaries, in other words, and need not be tied to the actual experience of having survived colonialism.

Several of the unnamed narrators are also shaped by colonial or neocolonial relations of power. The New India ideology that comes to dominate in India after the heat wave is one motivated by a desire to bring “post-colonial subalternity to [an] end” (26); for them, subalternity stems from being subject to economic relations that benefits Western countries but not India. In Chapter 101, the narrator describes a rejection of subaltern status as one of the forces that unites the Hong Kong protest movement of the 2030s. Overall, subalternity serves as one of the key motivations for ending global capitalism.