Kim Stanley Robinson: "Climate, Fiction, and The Future" | The Great Simplification #66 

At the age of 74 I am old enough to have participated in the communal hope and optimism for the future that existed post WWII. That genuine possibility has been slowly, subtly, insidiously sublimated from the American psyche like water evaporating from a fecund pond. That erosion is exactly paralleled in the simultaneous man-made degradation of the biosphere. Both of these phenomena were perpetrated by the inordinate influence of far too few people. Genuine democracy has died by a thousand indiscernible cuts. The plight of 8 billion people now lies in the hands of megalomaniacs. Just ask the people of Viet Nam, Indonesia, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, and now Ukraine.

Nate. You are a godsend. I am so grateful for you.

The fundamental concern for me is that, in spite of a growing cultural awareness of our ecological problems, governments have historically operated independently of the needs and wishes of those they purport to represent. That realty is more egregious than it has ever been. Governments are the voice of the rich and powerful and not of millions of ever-day people. I am sure that many people feel like they are on a run-away bus that is fueled by quarterly profits, and driven by money-drunk lunatics! So much of the heartfelt common sense I hear on these podcasts flies in the face of what our plutocratic "deciders" are actually doing.The Earth itself is knowingly being sacrificed to mammon.

For some reason I wasn't expecting this conversation to be so good, but there was so much content that was easy to follow for the average non-expert, non-scientist. A healthy dose of common sense.

Lots of wisdom condensed into this podcast. Thankful for you and all your great guests Nate, can’t think of anything better to spend my time watching. Namaste 🙏

Excellent discussion all the way....TD

One of the best. Two bright, informed guys talking about important things.

Me and my wife BB are listening to the book The Comfort Crisis right now. Very good book about the benefits of a possible Great Simplification.

Thanks for an in-depth fascinating and helpful podcast am looking forward to reading Kim’s book Ministry for the Future 🇳🇿 💖

No mention of Children of Kali? ...best idea of Ministry.

Great discussion and insights - thank you Nate and Kim. re 'Who dies with the most toys wins' slogan, sadly this is what many of us are engaged in, yet we may claim otherwise. Underneath this silly slogan is an absurd aspect of our consumer culture that shapes us to behave in such ways.

A very nice example of why we are in big trouble. He hopes an unproven approach like regenerative agriculture will save us but he won't stop his own long distance travel.

Outstanding guest and interview.

Also, "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community." - Aldo Leopold.

The entire future of humanity now hangs at the intersection of biology and planetary physics. Almost nobody seems to understand this. I am sitting here watching it all die, powerless to stop it.

I loved this one. Thank you.

Intriguing questions and answers. I'm going outside now... and make that my habit. Feels good to immerse in the changes of weather and to feel seasons and the climate premonition. I know things are changing with my whole body when I'm outside, not just in my head. And I can embrace change easier than inside square, hard, inanimate walls of my conventional survival prison.

I finished writing a novel recently, it will be published in the next few months and it deals with the collapse of civilization. I have no illusions that it can be seen as anything but pure fiction by 99% of the readers. It follows the same girl (who's a serial killer) from 4 years old till her mid 60's in two worlds: the one we know and another world where Germany has won WWII and Hitler was trying to avoid collapse. It was a really fun project but I have no illusions that it can wake anyone up.

Wonderful interview with great questions and thought-provoking answers. Greatly appreciated.

Very well spoken and intelligent...need to acquire his works, new and past. Thank you both

Thanks❤🌹🙏 for the episode, Stan and Nate👍. Hope renewed after this conversation! 🌏🌍🌎🌻

Nathan, thank you so much for doing this interview. It is the kind of thing I've been asking for for months. And it was great. I want to watch it a second time before I make a more detailed comment, but I wanted to make an immediate response.

Globally $7.5 trillion spent on militarism. With 40% market share US is #1 supplier of the weaponry and has been for decades. The money, materials, human intelligence poured like Niagara Falls into this black hole of death and environmental destruction is more than enough to reach many environmental goals.

Wow. Excellent dialog. Thanks for the breadth of voices and skill sets you bring to your series, Nate and team.

I read a couple interviews with KSR, and watched at least one other, but this one clearly being the best. It's valuable to have an interviewer who thinks he doesn't go far enough for a change, whatever that means.

What we must do is fall off the tightrope - the path forward starts at the bottom of the collapse of our current dysfunctional society. For every further step we take ON the tightrope, the chasm gets deeper.

I read the Science in the Capitol books. I loved them, and they gave me a strong sense of place around DC. The heroic president, however, was hard to believe after a lifetime of watching how real politicians function.

Excellent. Thanks to both of you for this chat!

Future positive. Thanks

thanx nate....i always learn something

The imaginary intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street and Madison Avenue is "ground zero" for our societal dysfunction. The "message" emanating from those three sources serves no one but the privileged few who inhabit that exalted ground. Humanity itself is being sacrificed there.

A real joy reading the book. brings the reality of BAU to you in the first person.

Awesome interview. Very inspiring

Nine minutes in and I stopped to order, "The Ministry for the Future". Now maybe I can concentrate....

Dude you have a vibe and a way of talking that reminds me of Jesse Ventura. I'm really enoying your video interviews. Good choices of peolpe to talk to. Ministry For The Future was a great book.

"Economics is ridiculous…" Truth.

Terrific 🤩💥✨🌀

People at the bottom living in adequacy is a statement derived out of there are too many above taking too much of the spoils produced by tearing apart the planet.

The best SF was always concerned with real issues. That excludes space adventure, which most people think SF is.

30% of land wild? it should be at least 99%

So, so excellent to see KSR talking to Nate! My first KSR novel was /The Wild Shore/ (1984), which was the first edition from Ace. Now, Nate, interview Paolo Bacigalupi, and talk to him about his novels /The Windup Girl/ (2009) /The Water Knife/ (2015).

"ecology coin" I've had a very similar idea recently. I call it Ecological Capitalism. This means that people will be accumulating ecological capital. That means the strength and size of ecosystems. And I think after the economic collapse, this will be the emerging, dominant paradigm. States, regions, nations, tribes and others will be relatively successful when they are able to maintain healthy ecosystems. The proof of this is that forests create clouds and topsoil, which together are needed to support life. Without forests, the climates change to arid and are less able to support life.

"Ministry for the Future" by Swiss Family Robinson is a fantastic book.

KSR! ❤❤❤

"Thirty-by-thirty (30×30) refers to efforts by the global community to conserve 30% of terrestrial and marine habitat by 2030. The movement started with international calls for setting aside portions of the globe as protected, and became official policy in the U.S. in 2021."

"What's good is what's good for the land"

There's a beautiful graphic novel edition of Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower'. I heard the same team that worked on that book is adapting her 'Parable of the Talents'. Can't wait. 'Ministry for the Future' is one of the most impressive books I've read recently. I also liked Carys Bray's 'When the Lights Go Out'. Thanks for another great installment, Nate. Keep up the good work.

INSPIRING

The GPI, the genuine progress indicator, could be used in concert with GDP to give a much better measures of economic performance.

Nate have you ever considered inviting historians onto the show to see if any of them have ideas from the past that could help us? Past cultures were much lower emission and energy intensive so maybe there is something there to talk about

legend

#solarpunk is the new genre we need

This was a great discussion, but you could have also discussed who gets to fly around in airplanes without it bothering their conscience. Also Ursula K. LeGuin.

Ahh! Freddie the Pig!!! So forgot about him! Great podcast! Love KSR.

There are a minimum of hundreds of science journals. The articles reach a percentage of people in the field.

I love watching anime, movies and playing video games on my big TV and I like the social media. I read a lot and read a lot of new books - I like to support living authors - and I listen to contemporary music, particularly Japanese Pop, Techno, EDM and Idol music. My father was a scientist and worked for NASA. My sister is a scientist. I am a musician, composer and English teacher. I am VERY concerned about climate change and the ecological systems of the world and I don't think that these people can be ignored for a moment longer - we should have been doing something about them since the 1970s. I do go for walks every day and I do like the open spaces away from the cities. However, I LOVE Tokyo and love being there. I want things don't but don't appreciate finger wagging at me. I love being modern and the things modern civilisation has given me, as well as a symphony by Bruckner, an opera by Mozart, a novel by Thomas Hardy and a sonnet by Shakespeare. And I enjoyed (if that's the word) Stan's The Ministry for the Future and his Mars Triology.

Nate when you do the deep dive into regenerative ag and the soil capacity to hold carbon I have a question. How do the predictions of how much carbon we can capture in soil compare with how much carbon was in the soil before the industrial revolution? I ask because the carbon we burned in the carbon pulse was not in the biosphere before the industrial revolution. It seem unlikely to me that we can push all that carbon into the soil as part of the biosphere. It seems to me we would need to lock up carbon in things like hemp based insulation not the living soil.

Let's make sure we can act in a way that we don't destroy this planet before going to another one

About halfway through and the book “ministry for the future” covers many useful themes but it also centers the technocratic elite in an uncomfortable extent.

Wonderful conversation, thank you. I’m sitting in the heatwave in Thailand and the wet bulb deaths have started and will mount up as it gets hotter over the next couple of months. The challenge is, the numbers aren’t being reported. Whatever organ collapses is the cause of death. Excess deaths will reveal the numbers, which is necessary. Anyhoo it’s bloody hot over here xxxx

Like the general thrust of the conversation, but some significant reservations. Burning Carbon isn't fundamental to the economy - energy is. Carbon based chemical energy sources are very "convenient", on a variety of metrics. In my country (New Zealand) we have a lot of hydro and geothermal. Agree with Nate that we need to look deeply into ecological impacts - far deeper than we do today. So what we need is energy and material use within the ecological limits of the system. And yes - we need to ensure everyone has material sufficiency, and reasonable degrees of freedom (commensurate with the degrees of responsibility that they are demonstrating). Reality is a lot more complex than most want to admit the possibility of. Our deeply evolved biases for simplicity are not helpful in contexts like those we currently find ourselves in. Many find it impossible to conceive of fundamental uncertainty - it violates binary concepts they hold inviolable. The tightrope of holding people to individual personal responsibility, and acceptance of diversity, is indeed hard (very hard, for many). It is so easy to fall into us/them binaries - where we are the good guys and someone else is the bad guy. We can all be both, sometimes at the same time; and we are in contexts that are much more complex and nuanced than that. But the more stressed we are, the more likely our subconscious systems are to put us into such simple us and them modes. Space is not impossible. Habitats are much more viable than planets. Agree that it makes no sense to go to space to escape "the inevitable destruction of Earth", that is not a viable option. Using space based manufacturing, initially remote manufacturing on the moon, to create serious technology in earth orbit and beyond, does give the real option of large numbers of people going to space. The energy required to get a person into orbit is not huge, about what most consume in a normal month of life on earth, if the systems are organised and optimised appropriately (about US$5/Kg using Starship - for me about NZ$500). So exporting western people to space would significantly lighten the load on earth ecosystems, provided that it is only the people, and all the technology required to house them comes from the moon, and the energy from the sun. What is impossible is launching all the required mass from earth. That is too energy intensive. Launching from the moon is doable, because it has less gravity and no significant atmosphere, meaning reaction mass propulsion is not required. That only requires that we put the bootstrapping technology on the moon. That is doable with Starship. Large amounts of mass from the moon would (will) allow us to manage climate on earth, eliminating the ice age cycles of the past, and holding conditions to agreed ranges by managing primary solar insolation +/- 5%. "What's good is what's good for the land" is better than what we have now, but is still too simple to be survivable. Our desire for simplicity is one of our greatest dangers. We have to learn to accept and respect and be responsible for irreducible complexity. We must learn to be comfortable with eternal ignorance, and with eternally making mistakes and cleaning up messes. In the face of eternal uncertainty, mistakes are certain. We can avoid making the same mistakes, but we cannot avoid all mistakes. Over simplification prevents a level of responsibility that is required for survival at our level of complexity.

This will be awesome!

Nate, I have now watched this video a second time AND read the book "The Ministry for the Future". The latter took a long time because I am such a slow reader. There is a bunch that I would like to say about that book (and your interview) but I'm not too sure this is the right place to say it all. Better to message you? email you? post a video of my own on my channel in which I discuss it? I'll do one of those things. But, in the meantime, in short, your interview I had underrated. It was even better than I remembered. Important! The novel, however, I found very disappointing, and I would like to try to explain why. In any case, regardless of its good reception, I'm quite sure it is not going to be the work of art that shifts the paradigm. If you respond to this, give me an idea of how to go on. If there is no response, I will probably comment on my own comment here, but I'd like to know that someone is reading them.

his 'ministry of the future' is a novel, but a better label is, 'tour-guide to the near-future.' it's a bit depressing, but look on the bright side, reality may be worse.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” ― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

I am commenting because the high quality of this discussion... It's been determined that lethal wet bulb temperature is actually a bit lower. It involves radiant energy input as well, but a recent study has come up with the value as low as 31C. Also, my assessment that we must soon thoughtfully begin to bring down temperature is continuing to firm. Feedbacks from natural reservoirs are already a major factor and present high risks of large abrupt releases. On a weekly basis developments are reported that shorten how soon they might occur. Even if the above describe feedbacks were to still occur, due to the already high levels of resident greenhouse gases, with less mayhem the social benefit would be large and the currently mounting mobilization feedbacks of adaptation, mitigation, disaster response, disaster recovery, rebuilding and relocation greatly reduced. I find it pertinent that WWII can be seen in the temperature record.

I suspect that most people who had that bumper sticker lived by it. I doubt they saw it as ironic at all.

Politics > Economics > Science That's the problem. 12:24 - This makes a lot of sense. We should have a government that is driven by axioms and logic, mediated by public argument and facts. Like the reason other countries have universal health care is because it was their value/priority. Just thinking about this shows the US is one damn inhuman place, but we have a great media and lie industry that somehow hides all of that from us.

This was a good conversation but I can tell this guy is severely addicted to the hopium pipe. He needs to have Bill Rees bring him back down to earth.

What would replace free markets? How will 195 countries act in concert?

Cool. I liked Ministry for the Future, however there are aspects of his proposed path to solutions that are disturbing. Assassinations, and authoritarian measures etc. That said, you gotta do what you gotta do 😂

Hi Nate, I'd like to invite you to make a deep dive into a non-dystopian vision that is based on doable technology innovation that you would likely not be aware of - but many marginalized alternatives will be "found" in the heat of the crisis we individually and collectively face. The future will not be predicated by the past and what was an intractable problem can vanish quickly like a mirage - and will make the majority of experts, who are predicting a doomsday future, look foolish for being trapped in their linear thinking. So, I hope you will consider how we can shape a future that puts the whole of humanity (meaning each family and local community) in a new harmonious relationship with Nature; a future where humanity will inhabit less than 5% of the land area of the Earth, while regeneratively, from that footprint, will produce an abundance of organic food, clean energy and pure Water-from-air. All these advancements in our human condition may sound utopian but actually depend on the widespread adoption of new technologies that are already proven and easily transform our built-environment. How do we make it happen? I think it will happen of necessity. Please see ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eZorgZALnHg.html

Nice to see someone who’s not addicted to a dystopian future….are we really that lazy and stupid to not respond to a planetary crisis? So far that’s been true. Until now ! A change is coming. Let’s work together to create/ recreate a better world.

8,000,000,000 + 80,000,000 new folks every year. 2,000 calories each. By 2035 9,000,000,000. 2048 10,000,000,000. This has been the arc of civilization since hydrocarbon civilization began in earnest.

Great video, but talking about geo engineering like it's not happening now is just insincere, the results we already know - decrease in daytime temperatures at the expense of increased night time temperatures. The materials used in stratospheric aerosol injection destroy ozone therefore accelerating the very problem we are trying to solve, let alone poison water sources and soil. The solution to the problem is the cause of the next problem. Either way, keep up the good work on energy. Peace.

This is always pie in the Sky .....nobodys going to do anything different, first off they resist actively, ie rolling coal ,second to pay the debt the system makes you take on you have to play along .....and no voting won't help

I have mixed feelings about the book. Many qualities: I like the dispersed format of the story, some aspects of the style, some useful reminders such as "climate change is real and caused by humans," or "we are in the sixth mass extinction," or "this is the Jevons paradox." But too many things are plain wrong. Chapter 56 in the book: "The US and several other big countries had withdrawn from the court’s jurisdiction (The Intertnational Criminal Court of The Hague) after negative rulings against their citizens." whereas in our real world: "The General Assembly (of the UN) convened a conference in Rome in June 1998, with the aim of finalizing the treaty to serve as the Court's statute. On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to seven, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S., and Yemen." Quite another reality... Chapter 55 in the book, writing about France: ...the Commune of 1848... No. The Revolution of 1848 (the third one) from February 22 to February 24, 1848, led to the abdication of King Louis Philippe and to the foundation of the Second Republic. The Commune was in France a Parisian insurrection against the Third Republic, from March 18 to May 28, 1871. The two are never confused, neither in French nor in English. When you know Switzerland, it is kind of hilarious to see it portrayed as a welcoming country for refugees, and in Chapter 47, you might be led to believe that the Swiss banking industry is an old thing of the past that has little to do with Swiss prosperity (LOL). And about Germany and France, chapter 50: "...the rest of the world was irrelevant, or at most instruments to be used." What should one say, then, maybe, about the USA? About China? etc. But the worst thing is the substance of the book. The reader might be led to believe that, yes, the climate situation is very, very bad (it starts like that in Chapter 1), but don't you worry too much, "clean energy", geoengineering and human goodwill will save us... in some decades, when many scientists today estimate we may have already crossed irreversible tipping points, when James Hansen writes "Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone - after slow feedbacks operate - is about 10°C." An increase of 5°C is generally considered beyond the point of extinction for humans. So false hope not based in reality is noxious, an anesthesic against action. Really, this is the only kind of book our contemporary fiction literature has to offer other than apocalyptic/survivalist, Rambo type, or stupid zombie series? At the most defining time in human history, maybe the end of humanity, I'd like to give this excerpt of "Where is the fiction about climate change" by Amitav Ghosh, in The Guardian (the whole article is online and worth reading). "In a substantially altered world, when sea-level rise has swallowed the Sundarbans and made cities such as Kolkata, New York and Bangkok uninhabitable, when readers and museum-goers turn to the art and literature of our time, will they not look, first and most urgently, for traces and portents of the altered world of their inheritance? And when they fail to find them, what can they do other than to conclude that ours was a time when most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognising the realities of their plight? Quite possibly, then, this era, which so congratulates itself on its self-awareness, will come to be known as the time of the Great Derangement." As global warming and overshoot don't happen in a vacuum but are descending on our society with politics, here is an excerpt from "Parable of the Talents" by Octavia Butler (1998): Jarret was inaugurated today. We listened to his speech-short and rousing. Plenty of “America, America, God shed his grace on thee,” and “God bless America,” and “One nation, indivisible, under God,” and patriotism, law, order, sacred honor, flags everywhere, Bibles everywhere, people waving one of each. His sermon-because that’s what it was-was from Isaiah, Chapter One. “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.” Adam Flint, author of "Mona," on Amazon.

Did stanley meyer really make a water powered car.

"We've been geoengineering in the past so we can do it in the future" is the most boomer thing ever. Boomers do this CONSTANTLY: "they've been talking about peak oil since the 70s," "they where saying there's going to be an ice age in the 60s," "the climate has always changed." Its like a meme, you could make a drinking game out of it.

Shouldn't climate scientists talk about planned obsolescence if unnecessary manufacturing produces unnecessary CO2?

1.5x speed helps :) India and heatwaves ... right, poor people suddenly became stupid and can't find shade like they did for thousands of years in the past

43:10 "How smart are you if you if you don't know how ignorant you are?"

This is the first I’ve heard of 30x30. Easy win for China, considering that over half their land is an inhospitable desert that will never be heavily settled. Also, their population is already falling.

Loved this chat. Real 🌎

Dude sounds like dubya

I disagree with him on the subject of why dystopias appeal to people. There is a dark part of my soul that looks forward to that future-if the bombs fall, at least I don’t have to go back to the office on Monday.

The problems with particles in the atmosphere is that it can affect the monsoon which in itself can kill millions of people in Asia and Africa.

2 degrees baked in the cake? I'm always amazed at the mechanisms people delude themselves with. The world is cooling. Two degrees warming is utter nonsense.

How much energy does it take to suck a ton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere?

The great simplification is too simple. Anything that requires a fundamental change in what motivates human beings is just pie in the sky. Talking about getting rid of capitalism is a case in point. Cooperatives! You've got to be kidding. I don't even think you could get 1% of an economy using cooperatives.

This eco-ideology sounds like a kind of inverted, materialist religion, in which creation is worshipped rather than the creator (as theists say). It contradicts so many of our great spiritual traditions, which tell us to focus on the spiritual rather than the material and the eternal rather than the ephemeral; that heaven can't be built on earth, the world is not under our control, etc. You need to find a way to incorporate this perspective into your ideology somehow, imo.

My guy really hates people sitting in boxes looking at boxes, meanwhile I'm learning what he's saying by sitting in a box looking at a box. I get the shitting on screen time like a parent trying to raise a healthy human, but I'm damned if I can't just spend the precious 1/3rd of my waking hours communing with nature.

The new incoming reality or call it Poly-crisis Planetary Emergency (not just climate change) gives us a lot of room to imagine. At least those with the capacity to do so.. Like this gentleman, Donna Haraway for example, are writing great stuff to imagine the Post Anthropocene. Inspires me a lot imagine the "abrupt and irreversible" Cli - Fi

At 37:55 he makes a claim about April, Wet-bulb temperatures in New Delhi. It's not true. Was he there actually? Several parts of North India (urban and rural) spiked at 50+ degree C (several days) during 2021 and 2022, where hundreds actually DID Die, due to exposure and heat strokes. Today, May 2023, North India in Summers is a Mad Max type scene, nothing like anything Washington DC has seen in 10,000 years maybe.