BOOK REPORT: THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE by KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

 

I READ AN INTERESTING “CLI-FI” OR CLIMATE FICTION NOVEL last week called The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The story begins in the present day and ranges over the next forty years or so, as it describes the growing impacts of climate change and how a small UN bureaucracy leverages its authority to promote broad-based initiatives to mitigate damages wrought by a destabilizing climate system, as well as initiating efforts to repair the biosphere that has been so badly damaged during what’s come to be known as the “Anthropocene” epoch. The “Ministry” is actually a more blandly-named organization established by the United Nations following the 2015 Paris Accords climate summit and is led by a determined Irishwoman, Mary Murphy. As its titular name suggests, it was formed essentially to “make the case” for the future, in a quasi-legal sense, and to “represent” the interests of future generations by arguing for policies and initiatives, and laws that would benefit, rather than disadvantage, those who will follow us. 

BEGUN as little more than a public relations lobby promoting “green” technologies and sustainable environmental practices, the Ministry began making inroads into securing the future environment by getting certain language placed into international agreements and national laws, trade agreements, etc. requiring there be changes in, for example, energy generation, transportation, land development, the use of solar and wind power, etc.

Some progress is made, but not enough…. 

 

THEN IN 202_ IN INDIA, there is a period of higher-than-average temperatures combined with high humidity, that produce a deadly “wet bulb” * effect killing millions within a matter of days. Following this tragedy, the Indian government took the drastic (and controversial) step of launching a “geoengineering” project to seed the upper atmosphere with reflective particles, similar to material that would be ejected from a volcano, with the hope that a certain percentage of light from the sun would be reflected back out to space, temporarily cooling global temperatures. The scheme worked, but the horrific loss of life shocked the world and galvanized Murphy and her team at the Ministry to develop their own radical strategies to pull humanity back from the brink of climate catastrophe.

While public opinion changed in favour of addressing the climate emergency more rigorously, vested interests, as well as inertia, prevented systemic and comprehensive measures from being adopted. The adage of trying to  change the course of an ocean liner comes to mind, and if that ship is the Titanic, well…. [Sounds familiar. Ed.]

 

    The "Cone of Silence" from Get Smart, 1968

WHAT THE MINISTRY DID next was develop a “covert” wing, a sort of "black ops" agency into which money was secretly funnelled. One clandestine operation was the creation of a powerful “drone force” that began downing private jets.¹ THEN AN AIRLINER OR TWO. Soon the message was clear: Flying private jets was verboten and jet airliners (which by 2050 are predicted to emit 5% of global GHGs) needed to become yesterday’s news. Air travel ground to a halt until non-GHG emitting dirigibles (“airships”) were rapidly developed as a replacement. The drone squadron’s next target was ocean going vessels, including fishing trawlers, whose heavy, bunker oil burning propulsion systems account for 3% of global GHG emissions. Then, the Ministry’s covert wing attacked the livestock industry (21% of globally GHG annually) using drones to inoculate herds of cattle with bio-engineered mad cow disease, causing populations throughout the world to turn to vegetarianism. 

ONE HUGE PROJECT to mitigate the effects of climate change was to slow the melting of polar ice sheets by (get this!) stopping the slide of key glacier fields. They accomplished this huge engineering feat by drilling thousands of bore holes in the ice of Antarctica and Greenland, then pumping out hundreds of millions of tonnes of melt water (which acts like a lubricant) from underneath the ice sheets until the massive glaciers once more settled onto bedrock, slowing their movement to the sea, thus delaying the sea level rise that would otherwise occur. To power the pumps, solar energy installations were built, as well as utilizing aircraft carriers' nuclear power plants (which is a far more productive use, one should think, for those colossal, floating money pits!)

 

TARGETED assassinations of intransigent or sociopathic industry executives and wealthy elites made the news fairly regularly during this time, as greater segments of the earth’s population came on board to help turn the ship around and away from the climate iceberg dead ahead. Massive investments in solar and wind plants, Co₂ air scrubber installations, and changes to economic systems—digital currencies and the like—made financial profiteering and fossil fuel production more problematic (and hazardous) career choices. Billionaires became less popular with the general public during this time.

 

ANOTHER HUGE PROJECT the ministry promoted was a massive re-wilding and re-forestation of the planet. Taking a cue from E. O. Wilson’s 2016 book, Half-Life which proposes to set aside half the earth for rewilding, Robinson, who mentions Wilson in his novel, chronicles the relocation of hundreds of millions of people, leaving huge swaths of the planet uninhabited. And along with changes in transportation, energy production and agriculture practices, for example organic farming with its potential for significant carbon sequestration, this process of rewilding was to slow the rise of Co₂ gases in the atmosphere by mid-century and then see their gradual decline. 

 

ALL-IN-ALL, ROBINSON PROVIDES an optimistic, if utopian, vision of a future, one that involves much in the way of top-down, world-government-level planning and administration. Written in 2020, his vision of governments around the world uniting in common purpose to combat an “enemy” that is not among their number, namely climate change, seems a far more distant goal than it did just a few years ago. In addition, the Ministry’s “black-ops” section, a seemingly necessary evil to "do what needs to be done",  involving, as it does, the killing of hundreds if not thousands of people in drone strikes and assassinations,²  is problematic on any number of levels.³  Though it must be said that bankers hanging from lampposts is a tradition found in many cultures.

Robinson provides scenarios of the emerging climate crisis that could just as easily be drawn from the headlines of today’s newspapers, along with technologies and mitigation policies that are part of the contemporary debate. His climate fiction is classified as “hard sci-fi” because the science he uses is real-world and technically accurate. No benevolent alien races will land on earth to save its teeming masses: only hard, decades-long work by governments acting in accord with the vast majority of their populations will begin to address the looming crisis.

 

TODAY (July 8/22), Robinson’s utopian scenario of a revitalized United Nations, a cooperative network of national governments, NGOs and businesses all joining together in the coming years to "do what needs to be done" seems a remote dream to me as I read news of the war in Ukraine, and how so many politicians in the collective West are seemingly incapable of thinking about anything other than manufacturing venues for conflict rather than seeking their resolution....

AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES keep rising, glaciers keep melting, species die off faster every day, and the world we have known for so long inexorably changes into something else.  

 

On the other hand, I LOVED 💗 THE SCENES in the novel when Ministry head Mary Murphy journeys to meetings and conferences aboard clipper ships and dirigibles. What a breath of fresh air it would be to use those modes of transportation again!

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

_____________________________________________

 

GHG= Green House Gas

 

*Heat waves are not uncommon, of course. A 2003 heatwave in France killed upwards of 60,000, mostly the elderly, and in Russia in 2010 over 10,000 died from high temperatures and higher than average humidity. As the globe’s climate system becomes unstable, weather patterns in various regions may more often develop “wet bulb” temperature events. In general, greater levels of mortality can be expected with steadily rising global temperatures.

 

1. On my bucket list is flying to Davos and strafe/bombing all those expensive private jets and helicopters parked outside the WEF (World Economic Forum) conference centre; the explosions and screams would be music to my ears! Make the SOBs take the bus home!

2.  One might have thought that intelligence agencies world-wide would have been working OT to discover the “secret drone” headquarters (hint: it's in Switzerland.)        

3. I’m reminded of the robot, Gort, left behind by the alien Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still to ensure mankind doesn't “extend its violence” beyond Earth. Or maybe Robocop. The Ministry's black-ops corps could become the ultimate global police force, and that would be okay because nice people are running it. What could go wrong?

 

 

 

Robinson, Stanley Kim. The Ministry for the Future: A Novel. Orbit Books. Hachette Book Group USA. New York. 2020.

 

 

 

RANT: IS THAT A CELLPHONE IN YOUR POCKET?

 

WELL, I DIDN’T THINK I’d ever do it, but I finally got a cellphone, a smart little thing that sits comfortably in the palm of my hand and periodically purrs like a kitten when it vibrates to tell me I have a phone call or text message coming through. Charming! And its ringtones can sound like water drops echoing from a dark, cool cave or perhaps a high summer’s gentle rasping of awakening cicadas at dawn. Pure pleasure! I’d sigh here if there was an app, so you’ll have to take my word for it that my new smartphone leaves me so relaxed and at peace with the world and my fellow, wireless brethren that it’s impossible for me to express myself adequately in words; a fumbling paean is the best I can offer.  Oh, 'tis a brave, new day that's begun for for the world!

SO, WHAT CAN I EXPECT from my new smart phone as I discard, with distaste, the land-line analogue I once possessed from an earlier, less-evolved time? WELL, one thing I can now do is move safely through the world, secure in the knowledge that my device “pings” nearby cell towers (like tiny bells on Christmas trees ring when angels get their wings) “…thousands of times a week,” in some cases.¹ THUS, I AM NEVER ALONE; my musical emcee announces me to the world wherever I roam. With my smartphone on me, AIs from my phone’s manufacturer, and through apps, downstream tech companies and government bureaucracies that fill the hungry interstices of my device (one with more computing power than was used to send men to the moon in the last century), virtually every aspect of my life is recorded and encoded into transmittable, value-added data. 

My phone documents and conveys to interested parties a plethora of data-points  concerning my movements, moods, my health, wealth, with whom I communicate, what I buy, what I search for, what puzzles me and what informs me. Answers to when, how, who and perhaps even "why" are all  gleaned from my personal data and metadata and sometimes they give answers to the great question: "Why?" before I, myself, know  enough to ask....

I AM NOT ALONE, anymore! I share myself with the world, just as it shares with me. I have nothing to hide and therefore nothing to fear. Those who watch and listen are my guardians; they reward and protect my time here on earth.  Thank you.

“With this in mind, one can only be in awe at the kind of computer power each of us holds at their fingertips. Never mind we use them for frivolous matter. Imagine what you’ll be holding in your hand (or inside it) 20 years from now!” ²

ANOTHER FEATURE OF MY PHONE is how “hackable” it is. But that’s such a raspy, negative word, don’t you think? Sure, there are bad people out there who would use my personal information for nefarious purposes, like identity theft and credit-card fraud, but with just a few judicious changes made though various menus in my phone’s administrative systems, I can make it much harder for them to raid my data, and, therefore, I am free to phone and text and “zoom” and purchase on-line via my smart phone. I can buy an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tamper-proof wallet that protects my phone from scammers. It allows me to sit with confidence next to people of questionable national origins as I ride the bus, secure in the knowledge my phone is safe from hacker intrusions. All that power! All that wisdom in such a small thing! Delicate, but, at the same time, robust. And with trusted AIs, regulated corporations and an all-encompassing surveillance state acting as overseer, smartphone use has never been safer. THUS, in safety and security we go forth into our new and exciting digital futures! 

There will be many teachable moments to come and much that our phones will do to us (even in spite us!) in the coming years. Truly revolutionary! A communication device designed by our best and brightest, connecting billions across the globe in an unbreakable web of near-sentient intelligence! Now, more than ever, we are living in a global village, and I say: "Welcome" *

Cheers, Jake.

_____________________________

 

* OF COURSE, THE ATAVISTIC SIDE of me is more skeptical about swimming in such gushing pools of positivity piped to the surface by our tech lords and ladies, who incessantly remind us how there’s a digital nirvana in our future, and it’s just around the corner, folks! I’m starting to feel like a turducken, stuffed to the eyeballs with the sturm und drang of technology and consumerism, and fucking capitalism with its dross and dregs filling every nook and cranny of our soon-wilting biomes and global nests.

Well, just what can we expect from our smarter-than-we-are phones?

FOR EXAMPLE: WHEN I CARRY my phone with me, I am literally NEVER ALONE,  which I think is just plain unnatural. GPS (Global Positioning System) is a standard feature in even the cheapest smartphone (like mine). It can be activated when your phone is supposed to be off, by police or your country’s handy-dandy spy agency, or retail and tech companies hungry for your personal data. 

When lost in the woods in bear country, GPS is a good thing. Tracking me as I go into my local Adult Book Store—not so much.

FOR EXAMPLE: YOUR PHONE’S CAMERA AND MICROPHONE can be turned on by the above miscreants even if your phone is off! So potentially every eruption of flatulence, every mad burbling you make when you sleep or any subversive missive you mutter while shaving in the morning could potentially be picked up and recorded by somebody, be they corporate, police, or government (take your pick). Talk about Big Brothers!

FOR EXAMPLE: Is your personal information secure on your phone? Oh you trusting soul! Think again. All your contacts, email addresses, photos, vids, and what is called “meta-data” (data about data) can be downloaded by various supposedly “secure” apps and portals, one way or another. (Read the fine print.) 

As they say: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” So, too, there's no such thing as a free app. Apps may be useful tools but they also troll for as much data about you as they can get away with. Data miners don't have to read, verbatim, your emails to know who you correspond with, how often, when, how long each email is, even what font, types of punctuation, word use, how many replies, when, from where, etc. There's lots of info about you for the taking and data trolls know where to look and how to get it. Every data piece is added to complete the "puzzle" that is you. To know you (they hope) is to control you. Head's Up!

FOR EXAMPLE:  Giant technology companies like Google, Facebook, etc., make most of their money from advertising. (They also make a pile from military and surveillance state contracts, but that’s another story.) They sell advertisers data about you (and you, and you), with smart phones as an important “data-sea” for them to troll. Google built cheap cell phones (Hey, thanks!), using its in-house “Android” OS. They proceeded to shovel them out the door and into our greedy hands. It’s not that phone sales are particularly profitable for Google, rather, the gold mine is found in on-going, real-time data-sourcing, whereby the tech giant  hoovers-up and packages your personal data and meta-data to sell to the highest bidder (either corporate or government). This hidden wealth pump is how companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft actually make their enormous profits. Sneaky!

FOR EXAMPLE: Our phones are becoming electronic "influencers". Today, most people, billions of us, get the majority of our information from social media and curated news feeds, while using our phones. And with pings, buzzes, alarms and ringtones, pop-ups and texts, we're being "trained"  to accept what our phones tell us, or guide us, cajole or suggest, and perhaps (someday) demand us to do.

SOME YEARS AGO a subsidiary of Google, Niantic Labs, created an app that allowed the popular Nintendo game of Pokemon to be played on cellphones. Called "Pokemon Go", the game was wildly popular in 2016 whereby players used their cellphones to track and acquire digital "prizes" in the real world. Local businesses (in many countries) paid Niantic to "host" their storefront establishments (eg. a local pizzeria) as a "destination" where players could find their digital egg or whatever it was, and buy a slice of pizza to keep up their strength. 

 

WHAT GOOGLE and other tech companies learned during this "test run" in social engineering was that human behaviour could be manipulated digitally. This was why Pokemon Go was created in the first place--to see if peoples' behaviours could be altered via their cellphones. It was an bold, "real time" experiment in social engineering. Using "behavioural analytics", subtle cues, word choice, subliminal messaging, etc. (stuff right out of B.F. Skinner and Behavioural Psychology) they found they could alter or "train" player's behaviour, if not their thinking:

"Nowadays, nearly every “smart” product, internet enabled device, and digital assistant is a supply chain interface for behavioural data, meaning they are constantly collecting your personal data from your everyday interactions."

 

"Tech giants benefit from keeping individuals in the dark about how their data is being used and profited from. This new power is subtle, using the internet and social media to shape behaviours so that they align with corporate gain.^{" 3}

FOR EXAMPLE: Phones have become a main interface between people and such things as government services, banks, businesses, and through social media like Facebook, with each other. While data privacy is becoming an issue, particularly in the European Union where legislation has been recently enacted to limit government access to citizen's personal data, regulations for private corporations and how they harvest, and use data remains a problem. "While most democratic societies have some oversight over state surveillance, there is almost none for privatized surveillance on the internet." (ibid)....

 

FOR EXAMPLE: OBSERVERS HAVE NOTED that authorities in China seem committed to establishing a form of social control called "Social Credit" (see Chart) that utilizes personal information about their citizens to a degree not thought possible only a few years ago. Of course, smart phones (along with "wearables", CCTV, and the "Internet of Things") will be a major source for tracking citizens' interface information, particularly if a digital currency is introduced, and people's finances can be scrutinized by government revenue departments to the last renminbi. It should be noted that in the last few months, in Canada and elsewhere, the possibility of national digital currencies has been discussed.

THE RECENT  TRUCKER protests in Canada and the Liberal government's audacious freezing bank accounts of protesters  and their supporters as a way of ending the demonstrations spoke volumes to the surveillance community, police and government apparatchiks who might be interested in strengthening their control over their citizenry. Many people, including myself, thought this set a dangerous precedent and was an egregious example of governmental over-reach. They used a hammer to kill flies and it is worrying that current legislative initiatives may add this tool to their toolkit permanently.

 

AGAIN, CELLPHONES are an important data source and interface, both for corporations who want to shape us into predicable consumers of their products and for governments who want to acquire real-time information about our activities at home and in the community. 

FINALLY, I INCLUDE A DISTURBING example of a potential new use for cellphone data that may be adopted by authorities in the near future. Recently, the United States Supreme Court overturned the long-standing abortion rights law, Roe vs Wade, which granted women access to abortion services nation-wide. Now, in a number of US states, that right is being challenged and women may face the choice of an carrying unwanted fetus to term, or else travelling out-of-state to obtain an abortion. And, cellphone activity is being considered as a source for evidence with which to charge women seeking (or who have had) illegal abortions, as well as doctors and clinics who provide such services. 

WHATEVER SIDE in the abortion debate you fall on, this chart gives you some idea just how much personal information can be gleaned by examining a person's "digital fingerprints" found in their cellphones.

ALL-IN-ALL, comrades, I think caveat emptor is something to keep in mind. And I'm hanging onto my old phone. Just in case!

 

 

^1.http://justicespeakersinstitute.com/smartphone-invasion-privacy-steps-take/ 

^2.https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/smartphone-power-compared-to-apollo-432/ 

3.https://www.kroegerpolicyreview.com/post/surveillance-capitalism-pok%C3%A9mon-go-and-eu-regulations 

 

 

 

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QUOTES: RACHAEL CARSON

 

 

“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”
― Rachel Carson