The Daily Planet #57: Metabolic Sovereignty, Part 6. The Ministry for the Future

In yesterday's Daily Planet, I raised the possibility that metabolic exceptions are bound to happen sooner or later. If and when that happens, we might proceed along (at least) one of two paths:

Existing sovereigns assert their sovereignty as rightful responders to the state of exception. That is India performing unilateral acts of geoengineering in the Ministry for the Future. Or what is as likely in the real world, India using violence to keep out refugees from Bangladesh streaming in after climate disasters.

Existing sovereigns recognize that there needs to be a single metabolic sovereign at the planetary scale, one who can act as the responder of last resort when it comes to metabolic exceptions. That is the Ministry for the Future itself.

Which one will it be?

Kim Stanley Robinson’s "Ministry of the Future" envisions a near future ravaged by climate catastrophe and explores the radical steps humanity must take to secure a livable planet. The story centers on the Ministry for the Future, a UN-affiliated global agency based in Zurich, whose mandate is to defend the interests and rights of future generations as the Paris Agreement’s moral compass. Its director, Mary Murphy, wrestles with the enormous pressures and ethical dilemmas that come with such a task: how to push the world’s governments, banks, and institutions beyond incremental policy, toward sweeping economic and technological transformation.

The novel’s narrative alternates between global policy brainstorming, technical climate interventions, and the harrowing lived realities of ecological disaster. Its opening is unforgettable—a deadly heatwave in India claims tens of millions of lives, throwing readers into the visceral horror faced by those on the front lines of warming. The plot follows Mary’s negotiations and the struggle to institute the “carbon coin,” a theoretical new reserve currency issued by central banks to reward verifiable carbon removal, essentially harnessing financial incentives to drive climate action at planetary scale.

I try to stay away from book recommendations in the Daily Planet for no one is going to read a book overnight, but this felt like the right way to end this week's Daily Planets.

The Ministry for the Future

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem&#1...