1 March 2021 — Origin: Climate & Capitalism
Book Review
Kim Stanley Robinson’s exciting new novel delivers a powerful vision of Earth in crisis and Earth transformed, but fails as a program for change
Kim Stanley Robinson
THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE
Orbit, 2020
reviewed by Martin Empson
With all the environmental threats that humanity faces, it can be hard to be optimistic. This is reflected in the plethora of disaster novels that have appeared in recent years, whether inspired by climate change or pandemic, that explore in the appalling consequences of disease, floods, famine and so-on.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel also deals with these threats, in particular the twin ecological crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, so I approached it with trepidation — after 2020, who needs more doom and gloom?
It’s the climate soap opera that’s gripped the nation in recent weeks, and it shows no signs of ending quite yet.
Recent scientific work strengthens and extends the arguments in Ian Angus’s pathbreaking book on fossil capitalism and the crisis of the Earth System
