Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message from the year 2071 | TED Countdown 

Kim Stanley Robinson is a renowned science fiction writer who has inspired and challenged readers for decades. His work explores complex topics such as climate change, space colonization, and the nature of consciousness, all while emphasizing the human potential to create a better world. Robinson's Mars trilogy, Red Moon, and New York 2140 are all classics that have won numerous awards and been praised by critics and readers alike. His work has had a profound impact on our culture and the way we think about the future, making him one of the most important and influential science fiction writers of our time. Thank you, Kim Stanley Robinson, for your vision, your insights, and your inspiration. *LOVE FROM INDIA*

There's this persistent idea that there is some level of catastrophe that will eventually knock some sense into everyone. In reality, the more cataclysmic things get, the crazier humans will become.

I will be back here in 2071, all of 79.. because a beautiful earth and kind humanity is my dream and I am not going to leave without living in one

2016:nations signed the Paris Agreement, everything seems to be on progress 2021:no one talked about this agreement... Bruh

Yea! Let's create the Ministry for the Future!

Thank you for helping us envision a better future.

smart man, incredible books, i recommend his mars trilogy if your scientifically minded and interested in terraforming and the associated social dynamics

This is beautiful and wishful thinking.

Be hopeful! As this is the only thing in store for us now.

I love this viewpoint, but I fear we will keep getting setbacks because of greedy Republicans not wanting change, but more money to line their pockets!

Ppl ignoring his call for socialism in the book are blind by choice

Ironic watching a Ted Talk on climate change, and seeing all the Bitcoin ads in the comment section.

Great summary and quite hopeful considering that the novel ended ambiguously. (There's a typo in the description. It should read 50 years.)

My new favorite bedtime story.

Any message in 2071 will start with "Hello, can anyone hear me?"

“To be human means to care for each other and civilization means to work together to create a better life.” - film '2012'

It is good, the way to go future for our life

Wow the more invested one becomes into this topic the more impossible it seems that we do indeed pull together to solve this problem. rip

I feel like the whole carbon coins thing is an attempt at making people start decarbonizing by now. If something moves people, it's money...

whats the name of the book and whence was it written ?

The whole vision presented here is to save humanity and the globe through vast, sprawling geopolitical, bureaucratic administration, measurement, and central planning. Am I reading this right? How well has any of that worked in the past? How well is vast geopolitical coordination working right now? I would have taken Robinson as somebody more creative than this. It isn’t good retro-history, it’s bad fantasy. I believe in creative solutions, but I don’t think that looks like “more and bigger government!“

Talking about 2071 isn't solving it because many people just don't care about 2071. Because they don't plan to be alive then. 50 years into the future. We have to think about the climate implications of the next decade then people start to care.

Love your content! Stay safe everyone 🌞🧚🏽

I really like the carbon coins idea.

Is this quoted directly from the book "Ministry for the Future"? Because I remember a similar passage from "Aurora", where the ship computer gives this kind of an info dump about the parameters of the mission, because it doesn't know how to write a compelling narrative - which the ship officers then proceed to scold the computer for. Yes, it may be a self-aware, 4th-wall-breaking joke, but it's ultimately just a cop-out if you can't find a way to weave all of this information into the story more organically, across time. (For example, in different dialogue scenes, which admittedly is a challenge, especially when trying to avoid "as you know, Bob" exchanges.)

Thanks

Does the United States have any concerted effort with any other countries, to hold the fossil fuel industries to clean up and have a neutral, separate entity to verify? And since global warming, is such a political football, shouldn't the focus be more about poisoning the air, earth and water?

I love you!!!

Word. Solemn word.

Hindsight is 2020, heh!

Reflection is painful for those who have never practiced it. ✨✨✨ 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart & soul's fate revealed. In Time, all points converge--hope's strength re-steeled. But to earn final peace before the Universe's endless refrain, We must see all in nothingness... ...before we start again!" 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ -- Diamond Dragons (book 1)

i enjoyed listening to his optimistic viewpoint, but it is naturally "first-world-centric". To be "in balance with the biosphere" implies the first world is willing to forego a large proportion of its great wealth and luxury to support the well-being of the vast majority of world's population not in this group. I use the term "first-world" loosely, to include all those who have the time and inclination to contemplate these worldly matters. Those not in this group are all the people in the world who's number one preoccupation is putting food on the table every night. How many are in this latter group? I would think 85% of the world's population is not far from the mark. Do we really believe that a "balanced biosphere" can support this vast and ever-increasing human population? I like to say that climate change is not the problem, it is a symptom. Yes climate change (and related factors) is one serious symptom, but there are many other symptoms of the problem throughout the world.

this was excellent, right up to the last glitch, after so much accurate and inspiring science and finance and politics etc woven in, oopsing it by saying 60 years ago and dropping the basic-math ball a bit right at the end -- it'd be nice if we started in 2011, for sure tho!

The best way individuals have to make this future real is donating to effective climate change organizations, such as founders pledge climate change fund. A small percentage of people donating a small percentage of their income should be enough to cascade and cause the global change that we desperately need!

Tq

Congs. U read very well

Now we can just try don't know what faith mother earth has decided for us because lungs of earth are already burning.

*I've tried to be successful in Bitcoin/forex trading and stock but I always end up losing money, last month I lost about $4,500 trying to trade for myself😭😭😭*

Wonder what he thinks of the 40°C+ record temperature in England in '23?!

Good luck everyone.✌🏻✌🏼✌✌🏽✌🏾✌🏿🙏

Great video

Mr. Stanley, I loved your Mars series. I suspect you feel that the human race should not metastasize to other worlds...

Maybe

In Grimm's fairy tales the good guys always win. Let's hope so

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 Fint, author of "Mona."

great 👍👍

It's funny because it completely ignores the nuclear war of 2023...

This is all very optimistic... I don't believe we'll make it to 2050.

Reading these comments really shows how Fcked we are.

2071-2020 does not equal 60 years. Do we get so bad at maths in the next 50 years? 🤣

Full employment means an end to poverty? I'd wager there are generations of slaves in regimes all across the globe who would beg to differ on that...

Why 60 years though? He's in 2071 talking about the 2020's. 50 years and less surely?

After taking the blue pill.

Hii sir

Nice fairytale :D i see different scenarios but we will see

I believe this message!

Too bad we won't live for much longer after 2030. I cover this in great detail on my channel.

New research suggests that the critical wet bulb temperature 🤒 may be as low as 31C. India has some areas April-May reaching 60 C., or 140*+F. 😳🥵💀

We are the only species with the power to destroy the earth and also the capacity to protect it. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Pricing pollution is a good step. But assumptions like full employment and planners being able to know rates at which carbon would have been used and sumilar are magical thinking. Pricing carbon (pollution in this case) is not as easy as it sounds, but this should be the narrow scope of government on the problem. Once a price is established, the market will divine the most efficient solutions.

That can't be right! There's no such thing as time travel!

Good

As he reads from a book... maybe you should read from "A Dark Wood" instead.

Sci-fi

Oh good, I wasn’t aware about climate change.

“…a message from the year 2071”

i don't like the "carbon coin" route- you have to have a carbon tax to generate the funds- and i'm OK with that- BUT why return that money- seems like a wasted step and a slowdown! spend it directly/quickly on the cleaner alternatives- like mass transit, bike paths, elec. bike paths, affordable elec. vehicles, rewilding range land, solar building design, energy conservations efforts like insulation, and or course free PV panels for the roof, etc.

People are trash. Care for the ones you love and enjoy your life with those people while you still can, dont waste time with others.

I hear Climate Science is a really hot discipline right now.

영상감사합니다ㆍ솜결

0:16

Reading the book now, not easy reading, maybe because it is not all SciFi..😢😢😢.Anyway won’t be here by then..so why bother😂😂😂😂

Man's understanding of science expands by leaps and bounds every decade, every year. But when fear-mongers continue to spread the type of drivel such as climate change, it only continues to fuel that fear. I have more faith in my fellow man to figure out solutions rather than just forever focus on problems.

fingers crossed ahah

TED TED Thank you very. O, TED O, Please help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee .. ! Thank you Thank you Thank you very much TED O, TED O, from my heart: I LoveYou.

Wont happen. Things will go from bad to worse. The feedback loop is already in action.

Methinks this work of fiction is overly optimistic.

MESSAGE FROM 2072 : Was the year 2924 the first real Democracy finally becomes a reality. The privilege of creating and issuing money becomes not only the supreme prerogative of Governments, but the Governments greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium was satisfied. The taxpayers saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges inflation becomes a problem of the past. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury finally become only matters of practical administration. The people have been furnished with a currency as safe as their own governments. Money no longer master, becomes for the first time in Human history, servant of humanity and good sense. This is how Democracy begun and was risen superior to the private interests. No longer people forced to compete against each other for private money, no more bankruptcy, no longer terrorism and with the introduction of the Universal Basic Income the problem of poverty was finally solved, free and abundant clean energy made available for everyone.

What a nice Fictional tale....

This must be a liberal art trick.

It's utopian to hear the global community has agreed that few countries will be paid for not doing what they might have been doing wrongfully. Although the general concept seems not totally wrong. Brazil definitely should get paid to stop deforestation. When will we finally realise, there isn't a risk of ecosystems collapsing. There is no fish around Europe, almost no animals. SEA, China, India. We are not facing ecosystems collapse. We are discussing monetary incentives to save the few last ones.

The liquid dinosaurs in your car’s fuel tank is the best solar storage battery in the entire universe.

This is super cringe bru

Yeah…

す

🧸

Time fly 🤣🤣🤣

I am happy that this is fiction. There are no time travelers who send letters back in time. They got to talk fiction when they talk climate change, either that or admit that the climate has always been changing.

a Fairy tale with too many , Pay , Paid , Money words. Got one as well for us : Life or Death ?, END of story.

Do you know why he didn't mention America ?? it's because we kept our right to defend ourselves and fought off the tyranny !!!

FIRST pandemic, hahaha, sorry !!!!!!

ROFLMAO

If only things were as easy as previous studies implied - the soil doesn't hold onto carbon as much as previously thought.

The glaciers on Mars are still melting, and we had nothing to do with it.

In b4 im propagandized

This was a silly fictional story.

😢 this added oomph to the hope in my heart regarding CC, but not enough to remove my doubts that corporat3 gr33d will check itself. Excellent video, thank you.

Lies

What a load of, FICTION !

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮