The Ministry for the Future

Mary’s security team takes her on a grueling trek over a glacier and through a mountain pass. Her journey ends in a secret Swiss air force base, where Mary is shocked to find herself in a meeting with the seven members of the Swiss executive branch (many of whom are former bankers). Mary learns of broad attacks on the UN agencies in Switzerland and the banks. Swiss banks, long used as tax havens for goods and funds stolen from victims of the Holocaust and the ill-gotten gains of criminals and embezzlers from governments, are not functioning because the attack cut off access to the identifying information of these account holders. This in turn is causing an economic panic.

The council argues that the attack on MftF and other institutions is an attack on Switzerland. Mary tells them it is an attack on the monetary system underwriting global capitalism, and if they are clever, they will use this crisis as an opportunity to become part of the carbon coin economy. If they band together with other small, rich countries, they will be successful in this effort. Mary uses her charisma, anger, and intimidating stare to prod them into acting. She realizes at the end of the meeting that they don’t care for her, but they are considering her proposal. If they accept, Mary will have found a way to get them to act where the central bankers have not.

This is a chapter on economic theory, specifically economist John Maynard Keynes’s idea that there should be a “euthanasia of the renter class” (339). Rentiers are people who derive profit through activities such as investment or interest rather than engaging in direct work that generates value. The narrator in this chapter considers what such a euthanasia might look like—it could be literal, it could be figurative, or it could just mean surrendering rentier income. The rentier class stands in the way of what needs to be done to respond to climate change. Their end—figurative or literal—may be necessary for human survival.

The narrator of this chapter is a man trafficked to work in a Namibian pit mine owned by a multinational corporation. The narrator and others mine ore and rare earths (including uranium, a direct threat to the health of people handling it). Fed up with starvation rations, the men go on strike one morning. During this action, drones controlled by the African Union Peace and Security Council and Afripol subdue the guards and tell the men they now own the mine, which has been nationalized by a new Namibian government.

This chapter is from the point of view of carbon, anthropomorphized as a good-time element looking for entertainment. It transforms across geologic ages from carbon to carbon dioxide to magnesium carbonate, a human-engineered end that reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

This is a chapter on economics, specifically how tax policy has and can be used to prod people to stop profiting from carbon-producing activities. As recently as the 1950s, Eisenhower and Republican Congress passed a 91% tax rate on income over $400,000, many times lower than the contemporary rates, which favor the wealthy and corporations. Piketty taxes on capital assets of corporations might break the corporations if high enough, forcing them to become small enough entities that governments and individuals could force them to change. Georgian taxes (land taxes), if high enough, would force the redistribution of land to many more people.

Direct taxes on burning fossil fuels would be revolutionary in that it would become impossible to make enough profit to prosper by destroying the biosphere. Taxation is a known, legal way of modifying behavior. People would accept changes in tax policies while they would not accept overt revolution.

Mary returns to Zurich. She is forced to move to a gated compound, but she is allowed to walk and go to work now that she has low-key, round-the-clock security. She cannot always tell who her guards are. Her security makes it clear that this protection and open movement are designed to show the world that terrorists will not intimidate Switzerland and the ministry. The banks are back to normal, and Mary doesn’t know if they followed through on her advice.

She visits Frank and questions him closely to see if it was possible that he used his work release time to get to her in the Alps. He can tell she feels disturbed by the lack of answers about the attack. Their visit ends when his ex-wife Syrine and Hiba, his former stepdaughter, show up for a visit. Mary is nonplussed that he seems to have some life outside of their odd encounters.

In 2043, the entire ruling Saud family of Saudi Arabia is removed. The new country, dubbed Arabia, divests from the oil economy and applies to the newly established Climate Coalition of Central Banks for carbon coin in exchange for the oil they are leaving in the ground. Brazil’s right-wing government also falls, leaving Clean Brazil (a pro-biosphere party) in charge. They also receive carbon coin payments, spread over time to match the rate of carbon sequestration, for leaving their oil in the ground and agreeing to preserve the Amazon. The indigenous groups who always managed the Amazon and their land in ecologically sound ways receive their carbon payments immediately as backpay for protecting the rainforest.

Economists have no idea of whether these shifts are good, bad, or neutral, exposing their forecasting of the economy as “speculative fiction” (344) at best or “pseudoscience” (344) at worst. They lose all credibility, and investors increasingly come to see carbon coin as the best bet for profit. This situation creates a dilemma for people still holding on to or relying on fossil fuels. Clean energy is so cheap that states and companies with large stocks of fossil fuels are forced to sell at extremely low prices, and they find welcome buyers in low-income countries without their own fossil fuels. Low-income countries with their own fuel simply burn it.

Meanwhile, Russia invents pebble-mob missiles, drone-based weapons that are cheap to make, virtually undetectable in advance of an attack, and extremely fast. Their existence instantly makes conventional weapons and war obsolete, and attacks on people benefiting from climate-harming activities, the oil pipeline that brings Russian oil to Europe, and military targets puts the world on notice that no one is safe if they damage the biosphere.

Then a heat wave kills several hundred thousand of people in the American South, driving home the point that no one is safe from negative climate change effects, although racism and anti-Southern sentiment lead some to conclude that the same can’t happen to them (they are wrong). Despite all these harbingers, the carbon dioxide level reaches the highest, most dangerous level ever.

Despite an increasing sense of futility, signatories to the Paris Climate Accords continue to meet. A key clause in the treaty was that Annex One nations (high-income countries) have a responsibility to help low-income nations and to shoulder the greater burden of meeting goals. The people of the future are essentially a low-income nation that deserves help. Although wrangling over words seems a hopeless way to stave off climate change, it beats resorting to guns. The threat of military force is what makes treaties and laws enforceable anyway.

Meeting minutes of MftF comprise this chapter. Mary receives reports from the financial, political, legal, and scientific department heads, and the news is mixed with mass extinctions still accelerating and financial manipulation of carbon coin (now called “carboni”). The work on glaciers and YourLock is bearing fruit. Janus Athena and Badim argue that a new “structure of feeling,” one rooted in global, pro-climate citizenship, is emerging. Badim thinks they should make it a religion. Janus Athena also describes work on plans for a shadow government if there is a complete biosphere or economic collapse. Mary believes something about MftF’s work made it and now Switzerland a target of violence, and she believes it has something to do with the data mining Janus Athena’s AI team is doing.

The first-person narrator of this chapter works on establishing habitat (wildlife) corridors to create havens for wild animals endangered by cities and human activities such as farming and hunting. The corridor between the Yukon and Yellowstone is a success because much of the land is empty, federally controlled, or home to rural towns that are depopulating due to lack of opportunities for young people.

They run into challenges in the Midwest, where clearing the land is a deep-rooted part of agricultural practices. The team working on habitat corridors does exhausting work in small Midwestern towns to convince young people that work on wildlife preserves is profitable and Earth-friendly, while work on farms is not either of those. The team wins the messaging war by capturing the moment when hired cowboys and a herd of buffalo and wild animals face down anti-corridor militia men in front of the cameras.

This chapter is an overview of shifts in thinking about economics during the 2030s. A new theory—Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which argues that monetary policy should be reorganized to focus on planetary and human welfare—emerges. The dominant school at the time is Keynesian economics (after John Maynard Keynes). Keynesian economists want to keep on doing the same things, like using the government’s power to mint money, deficit spend, and levy taxes to manage the economy. Keynesian economists think MMT is essentially communism, especially because its inevitable result will be rigid control over economic activities by governments. MMT theorists believe this is a good outcome, and that the government should provide full employment (a job for anyone who wants one and that pays a livable wage). MMT wins this argument as desperate governments begin adopting its policies to deal with a severe economic downturn accelerated by climate change effects.

Frank is the point of view character in this chapter. He has a monotonous daily routine in prison, broken up only by visits from Syrine, her youngest daughter, and Mary. Frank asks Mary if MftF is behind widespread attacks on people who burn carbon, but she denies it. Most people now see such attacks as well-deserved consequences for emitting carbon when there are other options.

Working in refugee camps has taught him that everyone is in the midst of some trauma or recovering from it. Frank aspires to a supposedly Inuit idea of facing up to misfortune with acceptance or even defiance. He and Mary talk about the overwhelming feeling—“the everything feeling” (371)—of being aware of 8 billion people, especially their suffering. Mary says this is no way to live. She tells Frank to go to the Alps on his daily release time for some perspective. He does that and locks eyes with what are probably chamois, and he has a moment of the sublime during which he sees the two of them as animals looking at each other.

In the 2040s, student debt holders go on fiscal strike by refusing to pay on their loans en masse. Members of the African Union declare they are not responsible for debts incurred before and during the process of decolonialization and thus end the hold of powers like the US over their economies. The hukou system, whereby workers are forced to stay in place and work for subsistence wages instead of migrating, collapses after millions of people protest in Tiananmen Square (the site of an unsuccessful people’s protest in China the previous century). The Communist Party in China is forced to reorganize. Kurds in the Middle East establish their own state.

All of these events collapse the banks after people lose confidence in the value of the money they are holding, leading to the “Super Depression” (378). In the US, the central bank steps in and essentially places the banking system under national control. Using tools like YourLock to do transactions, carbon coin, and local currencies to engage in economic exchanges, ordinary people realize the power in their numbers for the first time. Capitalism as such is dead at this point. No one can figure out why this year, like 1848, is one of revolutions. The MftF’s black wing likely plays a role, somehow.

A Navy veteran makes the argument that the United States Navy is a good model for what needs to happen with compensation outside of the Navy. One thing that works in the Navy is the salary ratio between executives (admirals) and the people they command. It is capped at a 1:8 ratio, much better than the 1:1500 executive to worker one in the civilian world. A disparity like that leads to poor leaders, cynical workers, people who quit working entirely or turn to substance abuse out of despair, and populist politicians who capitalize on this despair to wreck the system. The narrator believes a 1:10 civilian salary ratio would fix these problems.

This chapter is a riddle, the answer to which is history. History exhorts the reader to “make [history] good” (385).

Badim is the point of view character in this chapter. He returns to Lucknow, his adopted hometown. Badim was born in a Nepali village to which his father and Nepali mother moved to avoid prejudice against her. Badim’s life changed after Fritz, a German aid worker, insisted that Badim’s father send the boy to school in Lucknow and (later) Delhi. Badim was a rough boy and youth, constantly stealing and getting into scrapes until he almost got caught one day. He thinks of all this on his trip back to work alongside young people in a New India agricultural program. When he grows tired, they remind him that what they are doing is “forc[ing] peace” (389), the necessary work of building New India.

At the end of his visit, he is pulled into an impromptu meeting with members of the Children of Kali. They demand that he do more. He tells them he is doing everything possible and that it is time for them to stop killing so they avoid becoming like their enemies. They reject his plea, so he tells them the truth—he is the founder of the Children of Kali. He feels a moment of blood guilt as he thinks of all the deaths he has ordered.

Frank finishes serving his term, and the Swiss release him. Frank wanders around the city and ends up under the statue of Ganymede holding out his arms to the eagle. Frank finds the gesture “enigmatic to the point of blankness. His kind of statue. Ganymede’s ta-da” (393) and wonders if his own life can be summed up as a futile gesture to something bigger than himself.

As he wanders around the city, he feels ill and then a deep sense of unease as he realizes that, unlike him, the refugees at the camps where he works are essentially prisoners who have no date of release. They have been incarcerated for the crime of being so called economic refugees in Europe. They outnumber the populations of France and Germany.

He meets with Mary later and tells her she must fix this. Perhaps the MftF could establish something like Nansen passports that gave World War refugees universal entry to any country. Mary says it cannot be done because countries won’t cooperate. Frank really looks at Mary and realizes that she has in some ways as extreme in her thinking as he is. She needs a way to get grounded and gain clarity. In a reversal of their usual relationship, he tells her that it is time for her to go the Alps to figure out what is next.

The first-person narrator of this chapter is a farmer alongside her husband. She convinces her husband to sign up for a carbon retention agricultural project, but it takes her threats of divorce to get her husband to agree. Over several years, they embrace agricultural methods that build up their soil and allow them to weather droughts more effectively. They receive two years’ worth of expenses in carbon coin in the end. The beauty of it is that this is work they needed to do in anyway. Their story shows how ordinary people can benefit from a carbon-negative economy.

This chapter is the transcript of a conversation between Mary and Tatiana, the legal counsel for MftF. The implication of such a transcript is that the ministry is under surveillance. The gist of the conversation is that the rich are willing to take buyouts of 50 million to divest from carbon. Blockchain means they can’t hide their money from taxation, so losing an unreliable billion in assets and getting 50 million in carbon coin is a good deal (a haircut—an agreed upon reduction in the value of an asset to stave off more losses). Tatiana says that Russia is coming around to accepting a carbon-neutral economy because the gains they hoped to get from Siberia melting haven’t materialized and because valuing science as truth is a Soviet value. They hope embracing the new economy will allow them to gain more influence than the US.

A brash, profane narrator elaborates on the need for a Plan B to take the place of monetary and political systems when they collapse under the weight of climate change. Most revolutions fail because they have no plan for what happens after they overthrow governments and monied interests. Greece, for example, had to accept austerity and poverty during the 2007-2008 debt crisis because they had no plan when they initially rejected the European Union’s demand that they make cuts to the social safety net to pay debts. This Plan B will be in the open. Anything people need to stay alive will be run on a communal, not-for-profit level, and governance will have to be one that allows for true, direct representation. If that’s socialism, so be it.

Tatiana meets with Svetlana, an old ally and partner in her efforts to change the legal framework in Russia to one that preserves the biosphere, including land and animals. Svetlana wants Tatiana to get her out of the country. As Svetlana and others like her notch more legal victories, their opponents have become overtly threatening and violent. Tatiana says she will see what she can do, and the two women head off for a night of drinking.

Eschewing transportation that releases carbon, Mary travels by one of the new sail boats and high-speed rail to get to a meeting of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco. She is quietly amused to hear these conservative people talk about progress on financial reforms that are largely what MftF asked for. She then asks them to do more, and the list she comes up with—ending profit-taking from investment (rent), taking apart institutions that try to manipulate carboni, and ending high-speed trading—will be the end of capitalism. They are doing something radical but not admitting they are because a bias for the status quo and stability is built into their institutions.

The only one who overtly talks about what is really happening is Minister Chan, who talks privately with Mary. China is ready to flip to an economy in which necessities for life are truly held in common and in which all businesses are employee-owned. Mary is elated at this news and says she will back them. She sails home.

This chapter is a roll call of groups working to restore and protect plant and animal life on Earth. The chapter ends with a call for the reader to join this work, and indeed, these appear to be real organizations in the world outside of the book.