Kim Stanley Robinson – On Climate Fiction and “The Ministry for the Future”

The heat waves of the future could produce deadly “wet bulb temperatures” that would kill millions of people by sheer heat exhaustion. How will governments, citizens and international organizations react, if a heat wave killed 20 million people in India? That is the premise of the novel “The Ministry for the Future” – a novel that mixes science fiction and environmentalism.

The guest on the premiere episode of the fifth season of Planet A is renowned science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. In “The Ministry for the Future”, he writes about a dystopian, near future where the devastating consequences of climate change are ravaging the world. The book describes how governments and philanthropists try to use geoengineering, like spraying sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere or capturing meltwater of The Greenland Ice Sheet to stem climate change. 

While his book “The Ministry for the Future” invites readers into a world where nothing is unthinkable and everything is possible, the solutions he describes are not all science fiction.

And in this episode of Planet A he discusses the promise and perils of geoengineering, the COP-process, the current energy crisis and whether we need nuclear energy in the global green transition with host Minister Dan Jørgensen.