A World Without U.S.

"The great battle is between science and capitalism, and science has to win."

Kim Stanley Robinson

 

After the latest tragic Supreme Court decision chipping away at effective constitutional democracy, I've taken a step back from the daily drone of so-called news.  The logic of what is happening leads to doom in a variety of flavors.  So I go again to someone whose professional purview is the future, for a different perspective.

Since about 2002, I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's novels as they've been published (beginning with The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternative history that remains among my favorites), after and while catching up with his earlier work--notably the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green and Blue Mars) that made his famous, at least within the science fiction community; the "Three Californias" visions of different near futures, and the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-2007) about the climate crisis future.

So when The Ministry for the Future was published in 2020, I read it in the context of his past work.  I admired it, of course, and saw its importance.  Then President Obama included it in his list of his favorite books of the year, and that seemed to accelerate its entry into a wider world of readers and influential people. It has since become something of a global phenomenon.

I've recently begun re-reading it, having acquired the first paperback edition (with the cover I love, featuring an old clock face with no hands) so I can mark it up as I read more carefully. 

I met Stan (as he prefers to be called) in 2013, when he gave a talk and then a bookstore reading here in Arcata.  He talks well and fluidly, and responded generously to my questions.  Probably about then I began checking out his video interviews and talks, mostly on YouTube.

So I continued to check out new videos, which multiplied rapidly after 2020, as he became an international figure based on Ministry. He was invited to several UN climate meetings, first as an observer and then as a participant, though not a voting representative.  He's been sought after as a speaker and interviewed by principals of a number of organizations (think tanks in the broadest sense), as more and more people dug deep into his book. So during the six or so years since first publication, The Ministry for the Future became his full time job: his ministry (and he's said recently that he had something like that meaning in mind when he chose the book's title: advocating for those in the future as something like a religious commitment.)

Through the resulting videos I kept up on his thinking.  At first he seemed dazzled by what he was learning, including that several of the ideas he proposed in the book were already being considered by scientists and major banks.  Especially after President Biden's economic response to the pandemic and his signature legislation that jump-started American clean energy technology industries,  he seemed to become more optimistic about the chances of effectively addressing climate distortion.  

Then the second coming of Chaos, and the systematic attempts to dismantle everything that might help address the causes and effects of the climate crisis.  Including, quite recently, the final dismantling of the National Science Foundation.   

His Science in the Capital trilogy of about 20 years ago was about addressing the climate crisis, and the then- new danger of abrupt climate change. (He more recently edited these three into a single novel called Green Earth.  However my affection for the original trilogy remains unaffected.)  Notably, the protagonists include an American President and scientists centered at the National Science Foundation.

Like the more exaggerated feature film, The Day After Tomorrow, a concern in these books was disruption of the Atlantic current, which would severely alter climate in the Americas, Africa and Europe, and not for the good. Shortly after that in the real world, scientists began downplaying the possibility--until last month, when two studies suggested that the current's collapse is more likely than recently believed.

One of the books in his capital trilogy describes a climate-derived disaster, a storm that floods Washington and other places on the U.S. East Coast.  He named the storm Sandy--years before the hurricane of that same name ravaged the East Coast, including flooding New York City, as well as killing 254 people in eight countries. 

I asked him about this when he was in Arcata--did he think it would take an even bigger climate-related disaster to motivate and focus climate crisis efforts?  His answer seemed uncharacteristically vague to me.  But in his 2020 return to the theme, he begins Ministry with an horrific catastrophe, a heat wave so intense that millions of people in India die.  And that's when things start to happen.

But probably the major difference in the leadership that responds to climate distortion in this novel is that the Ministry is an international organization under the UN Paris Agreement, and the leading countries in the ensuing efforts are India, China and the European Union. Robinson wrote this novel at the ragged end of the first Chaos term, and so this time the United States is almost irrelevant, a weaker and hopelessly chaotic country, basically held in quiet contempt (except for California.) 

And so it is coming to pass for the United States.  In a recent interview, Robinson is scathing about the effects of the second Chaos terms so far, which he characterizes with the scientific term "stupid."  

He notes what is undisputed: Europe by and large is healthier than the U.S., with lower infant mortality and early death, while healthcare is cheaper.  Adequacy of income is more widespread, and people are happier. He cites a poll that suggests people seem even to be happier with their government in China than in the U.S.  He notes that these societies are much more science-based.  And they are moving more deliberately towards a green future.

So-called plug-in solar is widespread in Europe and elsewhere, though largely unknown in the U.S. due in part to heavy lobbying by recalcitrant power companies.  Cheap, portable and efficient (and most often made in China), it is rapidly changing these societies.  Robinson has been told that the collapse of the power grid that took out the air conditioning and allowed millions to be baked alive in extreme heat-and-humidity in his Ministry novel, is now much less likely in India because of widespread cheap solar.  

Things are hardly perfect in these countries, and fossil fuel pollution is still rampant, not reducing greenhouse gases fast enough.  But what Robinson calls the utopian vision of avoiding a mass extinction event, or even the collapse of human civilization, now has its centers of hope elsewhere, in societies that embrace a social ethic and especially science.

Science is hardly blameless or infallible, and scientists prone to arrogance and cupidity and denial of consequences of their researches have much to answer for.  But at its best science deals with reality, and ideally does not lie about it.  

"Sanity will prevail," Robinson said in a recent interview.  "Reality is reality because it bites.  It doesn't go away when you pretend [otherwise.]" Or on another occasion: "What can't go on, won't go on."

It's not pretty to watch the self-destruction of America as it has been developing since its inception, and as it became a haven and an example to the world.  It will take longer to reverse the destruction and rebuild than to destroy, especially when Supreme Court decisions collapse foundations while the Executive weakens and destroys institutions and the hapless Legislature paws the ground. 

 It's not good news for those who expect a future in this country.  Already, and for the first time in nearly a century, the U.S. is experiencing more out-migration than immigration (and U.S. birth rates are well below replacement level.)  People aren't even visiting--why would they? When they might wind up shackled on the floor of a bus on the way to an ICE concentration camp.

The implication of The Ministry for the Future is that while huge problems exist and will grow, the societies built on sanity will lead in addressing them. (Though the novel also posits a fair amount of violence.)

 Other nations in the real world, disgusted and no longer dazzled by the superpower United States, are already beginning this process on many fronts, including climate. In April, representatives of sixty nations met to strategize on reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions feeding climate distortion.  For possibly the first time in international climate crisis meetings, the U.S. was not invited. 

This meeting was organized in frustration with the regular United Nations process, which these nations (meeting in Columbia) felt weren't getting the job done, at least not fast enough.  But while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were singled out as unwanted obstructionists, other nations not invited included India, China and Russia.  It's very unlikely global climate disruption responses can be effective without China and India.  But without the U.S.?  Maybe that's the future.