The 2020 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, has been widely praised (it was one of Barack Obama’s favorites) for its portrayal of how the world finds the will to tackle climate change. Robinson is a well-established science fiction writer who has addressed global warming in previous works. Ministry is set several decades from now, when the UN has created a body, the Ministry for the Future, to think about longterm impacts and design policies to effect change. It has little actual power other than what it can generate via publicity and seeding the system with good ideas. Nevertheless it ultimately succeeds in prodding the global system to take action and bring emissions of greenhouse gases down to levels that avoid disaster.
As a novel, Ministry is disappointing. The writing is long-winded, the characters flat and uninteresting, and there are frequent digressions and mini-chapters crammed with supposedly relevant tidbits of science or technology or sociology. However, the generally positive reviews and popular response are not because of the book’s literary qualities, but because unlike most “cli-fi,” Ministry paints a picture of success in coping with global warming. Plenty of bad things happen, but mankind avoids the worst case, both planetary and political.
Robinson tries to weave together every dimension of the problem, throwing into his mix major geo-engineering projects; economic tools (notably a new currency offered by major central banks); shifts in norms and culture; geopolitics; and some fairly serious violence and terrorism. You might call Ministry a ‘novel of ideas,’ but that would not be quite right. The main issue is clear, the question is what to do about it. It is chock full of facts and engineering options. It is a novel not so much of ideas, as of information.
The point of the book is not really to entertain. It is to instruct and to offer a positive vision of how the pieces of a solution might come together. Critics have correctly said that Robinson glides over many huge obstacles and downplays the strength and ruthlessness of the opposition. But he offers enough specificity to make Ministry seem at least plausible and give hope to those fighting for global action.
The most controversial piece of the ‘solution set’ that Robinson shows us is the value of violence, mostly in the form of terrorist attacks and threats. In Ministry these are mostly aimed at industries or individuals responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Shadowy terrorist groups use drones to destroy airliners to stop polluting jet travel; they infect cattle with ‘mad-cow’ disease to cut down on beef consumption; board and sink fish-factory ships; blow up power plants; and hunt down billionaire arms-dealers and stab them in their beds. Climate activists kidnap the rich, powerful attendees at Davos and hold them to draw attention to their cause.
How important is this violence to the success of the fight against global warming? It seems fair to say that it is a necessary though not sufficient cause. It is perhaps inevitable that terrorist attacks and kidnappings and so on will stand out in a novel more than accounts of meetings between bureaucrats, so maybe they appear more important than they are. But terrorism has real impact on global behavior. Jet travel largely disappears. Beef consumption craters. Heads of oil companies and other bad actors are forced into hiding. Shadowy non-governmental organizations use drone swarms to largely end the superpower monopoly on the use of force in international relations.
Is this realistic? Does an effective global movement against climate change need a ‘black wing’ able to threaten violence and conduct terrorist attacks?
These are questions that some will answer purely on a moral basis with a decided ‘no’. Many in the environmental movement are strongly opposed to violence. But given the tremendous stakes for humanity, including the likelihood of immense suffering and death for hundreds of millions of people if global warming is not stopped or slowed, it is not clear that morality lies with an absolute rejection of violent means, if our best analysis tells us they are useful or even necessary.
That is the question to consider. Is violence, in this case terrorism, likely to help reduce global warming? Or is it more likely to do harm by alienating the public and calling forth intense government efforts to suppress terrorism and the movement it is associated with?
There has been considerable research on the utility of terrorism as a means to achieve political goals, and for the most part it concludes that terrorism is not very effective. For instance the very comprehensive work undertaken by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan for their 2016 book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Resistance, seems to show that “The rank ordering is something like this: nonviolent resistance is the most effective, followed by large insurgencies such as the Chinese Revolution or peasant rebellions, and the least effective is terrorism.”
There are a number of reasons, however, why we might need to think more carefully about the case of climate change before concluding that terrorist violence is a bad idea. First, the climate crisis is categorically different than the cases considered by Chenoweth and Stephan, who included in their database only instances of government overthrow or territorial liberation. The attacks in Ministry are not aimed primarily at discrediting or overthrowing governments. They are targeted at major polluting industries—airlines, the beef industry, fishing, shipping—and at individuals who own or run or support these industries. The goal is to stop particular damaging activities. There is no clear aim to change particular governments or states, or terrorize the general public. The attacks on aircraft, for instance, target primarily private jets and business travel.
Maybe for this reason the world’s major powers do not exert their full force to stop these acts of terrorism and to destroy terrorist organizations and networks.
Second, the higher success rate for nonviolent methods may be misleading. Insurgency and terrorism are often resorted to only after the failure of nonviolent strategies. The use of violence may be an indicator that peaceful protest cannot succeed against a given target. Violence is therefore not a ‘less viable’ strategy, it is by definition a strategy used in the most difficult cases.
And nonviolent methods may be chosen in the first place because those seeking change judge they are likely to work. Usually this is because the target has weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited. It might be a fragile authoritarian regime with fissures in the ruling coalition and uncertain support from its security forces; or a democracy that allows a fair amount of room for political organizing and protest. We all know that Gandhi and Martin Luther King were successful because they went up against democratic, open societies; they would have failed against a Stalin or Mao.
There is no doubt that in Ministry—several decades in our future—peaceful protests and political activism have not been enough. The book starts with a catastrophe in which tens of millions of Indians die from an unprecedented heat wave that literally cooks people alive. Something more is needed, and the heat deaths precipitate radical responses on multiple fronts. India undertakes a unilateral geo-engineering project to lower temperatures by injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere, and the terrorist group Children of Kali emerges to attack people and institutions judged responsible for climate change.
Third, there are many hybrid examples where a successful political movement has both an overt and a covert, violent side: the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress, to name two. The American civil rights movement had elements that threatened violence or armed resistance. American businessmen acquiesced in Progressive era and New Deal reforms in part because they were afraid that otherwise there would be a socialist revolution and they would be hung from the nearest lamppost.
The existence of a violent element, whether actual or only threatened, is often very important to the success of a peaceful strategy. It allows the leaders using peaceful methods to appear relatively moderate, and to make the argument that unless demands are met, and speedily, violence will grow and peaceful leaders will be discredited.
In Ministry it is clear that the violence perpetrated by the Children of Kali and similar terrorist groups is supported and coordinated secretly by people within the Ministry for the Future. The head of the Ministry avoids probing too closely into the actions of one subordinate, who obliquely acknowledges what he is doing; she supports him but needs to maintain distance and deniability.
The conflict being waged in our day around climate change, as in Ministry, is two-fold.
- There is first a kind of civil war within industrialized, developed countries. Powerful status quo forces want to continue burning fossil fuels and maintain a carbon-intensive economy and way of life. Growing anti-status-quo forces want to stop using fossil fuels and transition very quickly.
- Second, there is a struggle between industrialized, developed countries and developing countries, which have not contributed to global warming and are bearing much of the cost and damage. The developing world wants the rich, industrialized states to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, pay developing states to transition to renewable energy, and if necessary feel some of the pain as well.
Let’s look at these two different though parallel conflicts and ask whether terrorism is appropriate or possibly useful. The short answer is ‘probably not’ for the civil war within advanced economies, and ‘maybe’ for the struggle between advanced and developing countries.
Terrorists often have multiple goals for their actions. There is an overarching strategic objective such as ‘socialist revolution’ or ‘evicting the United States from the Muslim world,’ but particular attacks often aim more narrowly at demonstrating resolve and capacity; recruiting new members; provoking over-reaction from the government; showing government weakness; or publicizing demands.
The relation between the stated strategic goal and the means used is crucial. A goal that is extremely ambitious may be so unpopular or difficult to justify that no amount of effort or tactical success can make it viable; a good example might be the Red Brigades and other underground revolutionary groups in Europe in the 1970s and 80s, which carried out a number of spectacular terrorist actions but never generated much popular support for a Marxist revolution. A modest goal may have more support, but violent means may seem out of proportion to the stated aim.
Could climate terrorists in the developed world articulate a strategic goal that threads the needle to gain significant support while also justifying violence? I think the answer is probably ‘yes’, but it would require very disciplined messaging and associated actions. A successful argument would be that a. We are out of time. Global warming is not being addressed quickly or decisively enough, as shown by (floods, droughts, storms, sea-level rise, etc); b. This threatens our way of life and the future of our nations and communities; c. The obstacle to successful action is a minority of powerful political and economic interests; d. Attempts to overcome this obstacle by normal channels have been exhausted; e. Our goal is not to end capitalism or force you to become a bus-riding vegetarian; we are trying to save something approximating your present lifestyle.
One could imagine an extremely focused campaign, like the one in Ministry, that targets mostly infrastructure and a small number of unpopular people, and refrains from major political demands. But terrorism is not generally conducted under such controlled conditions—it tends to spill out to a broader range of targets, to spawn ever more radical splinter groups, and to escape the direction of sober leaders with limited aims. In Ministry the senior official who has directed the ‘black arm’ ends up pleading with the Children of Kali to call off their assassination campaign now that most of their objectives have been met—it is not clear if he is successful.
The closest historic analogue for the violence depicted in Ministry would probably be the “eco-terrorism” of groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Environmental Liberation Front. These movements did not aim at government overthrow and conducted mostly vandalism or arson directed at property. According to one study, only about 2% of all attacks were directed at people, and in no case (other than the Una-Bomber, who was a lone wolf without any affiliation with established groups or movements) were there fatalities. The purpose was to gain publicity and cause economic damage to institutions such as research labs, logging companies, and fast-food restaurants. (Because ALF/ELF actions did not target people and did not have an explicit political aim, it is not clear that they were acts of “terrorism” as generally understood.)
“Eco-terrorism” succeeded in imposing some economic damage on targeted companies and government institutions, and gaining publicity for animal rights and environmental protection. It also provoked a strong backlash including a major FBI investigation and legislation specifically targeting animal and environmental rights groups. In 2006 the FBI, in a truly comical overstatement, called ‘eco-terrorism’ the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the US. If our leaders were willing to go so far against a minor threat, what would they do against the kind of attacks described in Ministry, which are far more disruptive and destructive than 9/11?
Terrorism succeeds only if it gains broad sympathy and support for its cause. A terrorist campaign conducted by groups in the developing world against developed states (perhaps with state support or at least acquiescence) might do this. A campaign with limited goals—greater aid to developing countries, reparations for climate-caused damage, faster cuts in greenhouse emissions—could probably gain considerable sympathy from people in the target countries.
Such a campaign would be very different from 9/11 and terrorist attacks against the West in the name of Islam. These never had any chance of gaining support from sympathetic Western forces; in fact the strategic aim was to stoke mutual hatred and permanently divide the West from governments and peoples in the Muslim world. Despite this, this terrorist strategy had considerable success.
- It provoked the US into over-reacting by invading and occupying Muslim countries.
- US actions helped radical Islamic groups to recruit and expand, caused the US and its supporters to waste tremendous resources, and stoked deep fissures between the US and its allies.
A terror campaign built around global warming and ecological collapse, however, could be quite popular among many in the West who sympathize with its aims. If it was targeted carefully at Western oil and gas infrastructure, associated financial institutions, and some key government, industrial and financial leaders, while avoiding mass-casualty attacks, it might become viewed as a ‘Robin Hood’ venture, attacking the rich on behalf of the poor. One can think of the popularity of Che Guevera and other revolutionaries in the 1960s. By dovetailing with the broad aims of Western environmental and climate change movements, it could play an important role in persuading political and economic leaders that the status quo is untenable.
On the other hand, it might reinforce suspicion of immigrants and create a backlash against assistance programs. Anti-terrorist programs would expand, diverting resources while strengthening the national security apparatus in the US and many allies. Attacks would likely be concentrated mostly against wealthy, democratic societies and major multinational institutions identified with the West, rather than police-states like Russia or China, leading to suspicions about the movement’s underlying intentions.
Where does this leave us? Advocating or intellectually justifying terrorism on behalf of climate action is clearly a last resort. It could easily backfire and make progress less likely. How desperate is our situation?
Robinson describes himself as an optimist: “And I want to mention that this notion of being optimistic, it has become a truism about me. I am science fiction’s or this culture’s great optimist.” ‘Optimism’ is not a term usually associated with climate activism, but it may be more warranted than seemed possible only a few years ago. Recent analysis suggests temperature projections are coming down due to a combination of factors; as climate expert David Wallace-Wells recently wrote: “Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.”
We don’t want to jeopardize these trends. But we can’t afford to slow down either. The stakes are too high. I for one would be happy if policymakers and central bankers and CEOs sitting around their tables were more than a little worried that failure to act might lead to a violent reaction. They might consider that life can imitate art: eco-terrorism in the 1980s and 90s was incubated by Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel The Monkeywrench Gang. The vandalism of that era is a pale shadow of what might be in store. If Ministry helps put that thought in their heads, I say: good.