Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Ministry for the Future' has lessons for the present
Release Date: 06/03/2025
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An international tribunal of environmental rights activists recently found that the Canadian mining sector is “guilty for the violation of Rights of Nature across South America and Serbia.” The guest on this episode of Mongabay’s podcast corroborates these accusations, and describes human rights abuses in South American nations that she has seen in her reporting, too. , a Cree-Iroquois-French environmental journalist and freelancer for Mongabay, discusses how Canadian mining projects impact ecological health and the rights of Indigenous communities in places such as Ecuador and Bolivia....
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Top court delivers a 'huge' climate win for island nations
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The recent from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on states' obligations regarding climate change was celebrated globally for providing clarity on countries’ legal obligation to prevent climate , but was also appreciated by island nations for its additional certainty on their maritime boundaries remaining intact regardless of sea level rise. This week on Mongabay’s podcast, environmental lawyer Angelique Pouponneau, a Seychelles native and lead negotiator for the (AOSIS), explains these victories, their legal implications, and how they matter for small island nations. She says...
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Saving ourselves and nature means tackling inequality
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Rewilding the world, one acre at a time
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Alan Weisman’s ‘Hope Dies Last’ weaves stories of environmental hope
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On this week’s episode of Mongabay’s podcast, best-selling author Alan Weisman details the people and places he visited in reporting his new book, , a chronicle of miraculous accomplishments and resilience of the book’s protagonists, many of whom are working to solve humanity’s most intractable ecological problems. The book’s impetus was an accumulation of despair at the state of the world and how humanity treats it. “I started this book because I was really, really, really depressed about how I saw systems breaking down,” Weisman says. But as he uncovered each story, Weisman’s...
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How empathy and spiritual ecology can heal humanity’s rift with nature
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is a new podcast series from the nonprofit nature and culture magazine that speaks with prominent figures in conservation and culture about how humans relate to the natural world, and how they might heal and strengthen that relationship. On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, its host and Atmos editor-in-chief Willow Defebaugh details the series’ resulting revelations and why her publication covers the environment through the lens of community, identity, arts and culture. “From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to invite creative storytellers and artists into this conversation...
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How Singapore leads the way in urban-wildlife coexistence
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Singapore has come a long way since the 1880s, when only roughly 7% of its native forests remained. Since the 1960s, when the city-state gained independence, it has implemented a number of urban regreening initiatives, and today, nearly 47% of the city is considered green space, providing numerous benefits to human residents and wildlife, like heat mitigation, freshwater conservation and cleanliness, carbon sequestration, coastal climate adaptation, biodiversity protection, and public enjoyment. To discuss his city’s regreening efforts — from the philosophical to the practical applications...
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To change the world, change the narrative
Mongabay Newscast
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Cash for community conservation is tight, but this nonprofit unlocks it
Mongabay Newscast
says organizations know best how to tackle the complex conservation challenges unique to their ecosystems. However, they’re also among the most underserved in terms of funding of all stripes. On this week's episode of Mongabay's podcast, Collomb explains how his nonprofit, (WCN), is working to change that. When it comes to funding conservation," it's really difficult to know who to give your money to besides a handful of organizations that a lot of people are familiar with," Collomb says. WCN facilitates partnerships between community-based conservation groups, primarily in Global South...
info_outlineFive years since Kim Stanley Robinson's groundbreaking climate fiction novel, The Ministry for the Future, hit The New York Times bestseller list, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer shares reflections on themes explored in the book and how they apply directly to the world today.
The utopian novel set in a not-so-distant future depicts how humans address climate change and the biodiversity crisis, toppling oligarchic control of governments and addressing chronic inequality. Robinson explains how the novel works as ”a kind of cognitive map of the way the world is going now, the way things work and the way things might be bettered. And also a sort of sense of hope or resiliency in the face of the reversals that will inevitably come along the way.“
In this conversation, he also explains how storytelling can help humans fight a “war of ideas” and speaks about challenging economic inequities with what he calls “postcapitalism.”
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Image Credit: Screenshot of the book cover for ‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, published by Orbit. Cover art by Trevillion Images. Cover design by Lauren Panepinto.
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Timecodes
(00:00) What Stan would change about the book today
(07:56) We’re all ‘in a sci-fi novel we’re co-authoring together’
(13:37) Challenging capitalism with ‘post-capitalism’
(19:43) Is ‘Degrowth’ part of the Ministry for the Future?
(23:45) About Frank
(27:24) The inspiration for Mary Murphy
(30:34) The threat of ‘wet bulb’ 35C temps
(36:37) How to fight a ‘war of ideas’
(42:21) You cannot kill the future
(46:26) Before you read the book…
(49:27) Looking to Antarctica