The Ministry for the Future

Living in a postcard, continued.

No more paper hanging over my head: time to get back to the reading list. I put The Ministry for the Future last on the list, thinking it would be tough going - but once I finally picked it up and got started, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't. Not a read-it-compulsively-in-an-afternoon thing, for sure (it's heavy stuff) but engaging enough that I read a good chunk of it on the train going to and from Germany, and that's saying something because lately reading-while-traveling usually just makes me sleepy. 

To and from where in Germany, you might ask? Well, that's another post. At least I don't think I've written one on that trip yet... And I *know* I haven't written about taking the train to Budapest to see my most favored brother. Or about the Dulay family Tour de Suisse... I have some blogging to catch up on! 

No time like the present. So: The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is nominally about the founding and operation of the aforementioned ministry, which is formed in 2025 and tasked with representing future generations in current policy discussions. But the details around the everyday operation of the Ministry itself are vague at best - it serves more to anchor a collection of snapshots that attempt to answer the question, "what could the next 50 years look like if we don't fuck this up entirely?" There are many threads to this story - human and non-human points of view, different cultures and ideologies, technical and non-technical climate solutions. I liked the balance the book strikes between optimism (we might get through this!) and realism/pessimism (everything isn't tied in a neat bow at the end, and the whole thing takes place against the backdrop of the certain horrors and loss that are coming our way). I was reminded again of Rick Rubin's participating-in-the-creative-life-of-the-universe thing...there was just so much that resonated with me. My philosophy instructor's definition of philosophy is "that thing you nearly thought of yourself." I have never nearly written a painstakingly crafted 500-page novel on our climate future. But if I were to write such a thing, it would definitely sound and feel like this! Ha.

Sometimes the book does feel like a long and quite technical advertisement for the carbon coin, which, great I'm sold let's do it. The climate solutions on other fronts though...range in plausibility. I'm dubious of the Jules-Verne-inspired solar-powered airships and sailboats, as awesome as they sound. And a "new old religion" takes the form of a Gaia day in which billions of people around the planet simultaneously sing praises to mother Earth and log their participation on their phones...I dunno maybe I guess? Granted, this is fiction. In the book as in real life there's work do do on many fronts, and we don't know how it will end or where, if anywhere, the breakthrough will come.

One of the draws of the book was its setting in Zurich, and on that front I've gotta say it didn't do much for me. Probably it's a subject I'm too close to. Or maybe it's better to say, Kim Stanley Robinson had his Swiss experience (apparently he lived here for two years in the 80s) and I have mine... I suspect his choice of Switzerland is related to this excerpt:

Chapter 15: Possibly some of the richest two percent of the world’s population have decided to give up on the pretense that “progress” or “development” or “prosperity” can be achieved for all eight billion of the world’s people. For quite a long time, a century or two, this “prosperity for all” goal had been the line taken; that although there was inequality now, if everyone just stuck to the program and did not rock the boat, the rising tide would eventually float even the most high-and-dry among them. But early in the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of maintaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions, bought the governments or disabled them from action against them, and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time, which really came down to just the remainder of their lives, and perhaps the lives of their children if they were feeling optimistic—beyond that, après moi le deluge.
    A rational response to an intractable problem. But not really. There was scientifically supported evidence to show that if the Earth’s available resources were divided up equally among all eight billion humans, everyone would be fine. They would all be at adequacy, and the scientific evidence very robustly supported the contention that people living at adequacy, and confident they would stay there (a crucial point), were healthier and thus happier than rich people. So the upshot of that equal division would be an improvement for all.
    Rich people would often snort at this last study, then go off and lose sleep over their bodyguards, tax lawyers, legal risks—children crazy with arrogance, love not at all fungible—over-eating and over-indulgence generally, resulting health problems, ennui and existential angst—in short, an insomniac faceplant into the realization that science was once again right, that money couldn’t buy health or love or happiness. Although it has to be added that a reliable sufficiency of money is indeed necessary to scaffold the possibility of those good things. The happy medium, the Goldilocks zone in terms of personal income, according to sociological analyses, seemed to rest at around 100,000 US dollars a year, or about the same amount of money that working scientists made, which was a little suspicious in several senses, but there it stood: data.
    And one can run the math. The 2,000 Watt Society, started in 1998 in Switzerland, calculated that if all the energy consumed by households were divided by the total number of humans alive, each would have the use of about 2,000 watts of power, meaning about 48 kilowatt-hours per day. The society’s members then tried living on that amount of electricity to see what it was like: they found it was fine. It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering: it was even reported to feel more stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment.     

Oh how I want this to be true. It feels true! Swiss society, in all its egalitarian fastidiousness: the small apartments, the public transport, the public cooperatives - could this be sustainable living? If we Americans could all just turn down the volume on our need to achieve, grow, get bigger, get richer, claw our way to the top of the heap - maybe we too could live comfortably into our 90s, hiking the Alps [or closest equivalent natural wonder] and ending the day on a stunning mountaintop restaurant, toasting the sunset with our closest friends!

Except for this, from the FAQ attached to the WWF's Carbon Footprint Calculator for Switzerland (which is here): 

How is it that it is almost impossible to achieve a footprint of 1 [equal share of the Earth's renewable resources] or less?
A wide variety of climate impacts cannot be directly influenced by individuals – they are caused by the entire population. Examples include: the construction and maintenance of road and transport networks, water supply, wastewater disposal, street lighting, waste management, the government apparatus with all its employees, the police, the army, emergency services, doctors, hospitals, retirement homes, and much more. These services and many more are provided to you in Switzerland, whether you use them or not. The provision of these services requires resources and causes environmental impacts that must be absorbed by nature. This base amount, which cannot be influenced by individuals or can only be influenced through political influence or elections, is included in the footprint of every resident of Switzerland.

My footprint is 2.5 Earths.  

I'm not sure there's a comfortable way out of this.

Back in feminist theology class I wrote a poem, and I thought of it again as I was reading through the 18 pages (!) of interesting-to-me quotes I pulled out of The Ministry for the Future.  

The Body of Christ
"organism"
is probably
a better word
because the shape of the whole is
beyond our ability to grasp

we'd be "cells"
in this metaphor
eight point one billion
and growing

connected?
yes, but again:
in ways
only the Creator
can fully perceive

and she says
"it is good"
we try to believe
and keep going