The ministry of the future

For the last two weeks, I have advised everyone that I talk to, to pick up a copy of “The ministry for the future”. Not a business book, but a novel. A novel about climate change. The last time I got excited about a novel covering business topics was “Change agent” by Daniel Suarez.

Blow your mind

The ministry of the future will blow your mind and covers some very interesting perspectives. Very similar to “The end of Western Civilisation, a view from the future” but then more optimistic in the end. I will try to cover some of the concepts. Some of them are predictions of the future. Future truths if you want. I think the author is spot on about his predictions on policy, society and technology.

Beginning with climate change itself

Humans are burning about 40 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion tons) of fossil carbon per year. Scientists have calculated that we can burn about 500 more gigatons of fossil carbon before we push the average global temperature over 2 degrees Celsius higher than it was when the industrial revolution began; this is as high as we can push it, they calculate, before really dangerous effects will follow for most of Earth’s bioregions, meaning also food production for people.

The carbon suspects