The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

“Set increasingly stringent standards for carbon emissions across the six biggest emitting sectors, and pretty soon you’re in carbon-negative territory and working your way back to 350.” “The six biggest emitters being?” “Industry, transport, land use, buildings, transportation, and cross-sector.” “Cross-sector?” “Everything not in the other five.

Setting a generous definition of a universal necessary income, guaranteeing jobs to all, and capping personal annual income at ten times that minimum amount, as they had done in many countries, had immediately crushed Gini figures down.

There are fewer humans than before. The demographic peak is in the past, we are a little fewer than we were before, and on a trajectory for that to continue. People speak now of an optimum number of humans; some say two billion, others four; no one really knows. It will be an experiment. All of us in balance, we the people, meaning we the living be

So now people were using older instruments like the Inclusive Prosperity Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator, the UN’s Human Development Index Inequality Adjusted, and the Global Footprint Index.

landscape restoration, regenerative ag, reforestation, biochar and kelp beds, direct air capture and storage,

Guaranteed jobs, yes, but also universal basic services, and supported social reproduction, along with infrastructure and housing construction projects, had completed the rise out of poverty at the low end of the world income scale. Capping individual income and wealth had flattened the top of the scale.

The pay justice movements, the wage ratio movements, and the central banks’ recommended tax plans, plus political movements everywhere supporting job guarantees and progressive taxation,

And of course some of us had read about the Commune and realized if we didn’t win decisively we would be hunted down and killed, or at best jailed for life.

The status of women was not just an indicator, but fundamental to the success of any culture.