The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

This novel imagines solutions for the climate change that the author believes will stop life on Earth if not reversed.  It does so through two main characters.  Frank is a doctor working in India when an inversion creates a heat emergency that kills thousands; he survives but isn't sure why he does when so many around him do not.  Mary Murphy is the head of the Ministry For The Future, headquartered in Switzerland and charged with getting all the countries of Earth to work together to solve the climate crisis.

Over the years, these two characters intersect periodically.  Various methods of changing things are suggested; economic, individual saving, carbon credits and others.  These methods are enacted in the novel and over decades, we start to see first a standstill of the disaster then a reversal of the crisis.  These are sweeping changes; moving humans out of huge areas of land to let it go back to a native state and encouraging animals to breed, a worldwide currency based on carbon credits, massive governmental oversight of every aspect of life.  While the solutions suggested are far-ranging and hopeful in their effect, it is up to the reader to decide if they are realistic.

This is my first read of this author.  I found this novel to be somewhat of a slog with lots of preachy suggestions that I found unrealistic.  For one example, there is lightly thrown out that perhaps we need to have an optimum number of humans with the suggested range being two to four billion.  Since the world's population is currently almost eight billion, one is left to wonder who would be in charge of deciding which half of the population should be erased.  This book is recommended for readers of environmental science fiction.