Martha Dillon

Cli-fi, Sci-fi and the near future In his novel, Ministry of the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson undertakes an exercise in what he refers to as ‘future modelling’. Looking at the near future, he builds on the ideas of Australian civil engineer and geo-hydrologistDelton Chen who proposed incentivising carbon reduction through the use of a digital global currency – the ‘carbon coin’.

How do you describe a mountain – something too big to look at all in one go? Do you focus on the peaks and crags, the way it drops off only to pick up somewhere else? Or on lines and shadows stretching messily across the landscape over which it towers? Perhaps it’s not about the mountain itself, but the life systems it supports, the birds, mammals, humans that make their home in its folds.

I’ve recently been called upon to contribute to debates and roundtables on how to engage more people from so-called BAME backgrounds in environmental issues and campaigns. It’s hard to clear a space to review thoughts on these and other important subjects, especially as I always tend to want to try and refresh my thinking. I have been wondering how philosophical inquiry dovetailed with racist scientific methodologies in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the rationalisation of African enslavement.