{"id":11885,"date":"2021-01-04T11:07:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T08:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=11885"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:22","slug":"the-past-the-present-and-the-ministry-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2021\/01\/04\/the-past-the-present-and-the-ministry-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"The past, the present and The Ministry for the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On New Year\u2019s Eve of 2020, the carbon dioxide in Earth\u2019s atmosphere measured 415 parts per million at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esrl.noaa.gov\/gmd\/ccgg\/trends\/monthly.html\">Mauna Loa monitoring site<\/a>\u00a0operated by NOAA in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On New Year\u2019s Day of 2021, the CO2 reading was 447 ppm at the same site \u2013 so long as it was being read from the pages of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.orbitbooks.net\/orbit-excerpts\/the-ministry-for-the-future-chp-3\/#:~:text=Read%20a%20sample%20from%20THE,behaviours%20that%20drive%20these%20forces.\">The Ministry for the Future<\/a>,\u201d the latest novel from science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. That CO2 reading from the book, whose characters arrive in the near-future year of 2025, rises to 475 ppm as the story unfolds before the CO2 level ultimately begins its slow descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt was down to 451 now, same as in the year 2032, and it was on a clear path to drop further, maybe even all the way to 350,\u201d writes Robinson in Chapter 94, the same chapter that mentions the 58th COP meeting of the Paris Agreement signatories. (In reality, the postponed 2020 meeting in Scotland is the 26th such COP meeting.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe discussion now was how far down they wanted to take it,\u201d Robinson continues. \u201cThis was a very different kind of discussion than the one that had commanded the world\u2019s attention for the previous forty years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book itself has been at the center of much discussion, but it would be a mistake to assume that Robinson\u2019s work is an optimistic adventure, a tale of humanity\u2019s success in pulling the planet back from the brink of catastrophe. The story begins with the deaths of 20 million people in India after a cruel and unprecedented heat wave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are countless more deaths to follow, some at the hands of ecoterrorists forcing an end to air travel or meat consumption, some as assassinations of those implicated in carbon-intensive industries or those whose policies failed to curb them.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sustainability-times.com\/environmental-protection\/the-past-the-present-and-the-ministry-for-the-future\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On New Year\u2019s Eve of 2020, the carbon dioxide in Earth\u2019s atmosphere measured 415 parts per million at the\u00a0Mauna Loa monitoring site\u00a0operated by NOAA in the United States. On New&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}