http://www.lablit.com/article/208/
Kim Stanley Robinson:
The third and final book in your ‘Science in the Capitol’ series, Sixty Days and Counting, is about to come out. Do you believe that abrupt climate change is as big of a threat as it’s portrayed in the trilogy?
Oh yes. “The world has just ten years to reverse surging greenhouse gas emissions or risk runaway climate change that could make many parts of the planet uninhabitable.” That sentence comes from a description of the IPCC report about to come out this week. It’s actually gotten a lot scarier than when I started this novel in three volumes, back in 2001, although the potential for major change was clearly there. I started my book when the Greenland ice core date confirmed that the Younger Dryas had dropped the world into a little ice age in about three years. That to me was an obvious science fiction scenario to explore; very possible, very huge in its ramifications, and a story that did not span centuries, which was something I wanted to avoid in that story.
Has anyone criticized you for scaremongering? Any hate-mail from Republicans?
No, I think as a science fiction writer I am given a pass there, as dramatizing dire consequences is part of what science fiction has always done.
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How do you feel about George W.’s continuing fall from grace?
Faster the better. I would like to see impeachment and a direct flight to the World Court to be tried as a war criminal, along with Cheney and his whole gang.
Are we doomed?
No, not at all. Also this is not the right question to ask, as it is a form of the question “Is it too late?” If you reply “No it’s not too late,” then there’s an implied response, “Then I don’t have to do anything.” But if you say “Yes it’s too late,” then the response is, “Then I don’t have to do anything.” Both answers promote a quietist response. Same with “Are we doomed?” because if yes, oh well; and if not, then oh good; but either way, not a spur to action.
It’s better to ask, Will we lose more or will we lose less? Meaning species, the biosphere, Earth’s beauty and human usefulness. We are going to lose some; the population surge and the path-dependent technologies already in place make that certain, and the stubborn pseudo-science we call economics makes it certain too. So we are going to lose some species (already in the thousands lost) and crucial habitat; but the question is, how much lost, and can we contain the damage enough to avoid a crash of civilization (maybe that’s what you mean in shorthand when asking ‘Are we doomed’)?
We are faced, in other words, with a tremendously serious global emergency, a clear and present danger, right now, and we have to respond well. Some people conclude immediately, “we are therefore doomed,” but this is an easy cynicism that we can no longer afford. That attitude contributes to the danger. And it isn’t necessary. We have the technological ability to build a clean and sustainable civilization, what some people call a permaculture, and there are signs everywhere that people are aware of that and trying to enact it, against some very powerful reactionary forces....
