Abundance or adequacy? The search for better climate futures: Imagine series
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.8 • 296 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kim Stanley Robinson’s life project has been imagining utopias. He’s a science-fiction writer best known in climate circles for writing Ministry For The Future, which depicts a future in which the world gets to grips with climate change following an extreme heat event that kills millions. Robinson joins Akshat Rathi this week on Zero to discuss how to create better futures and whether it’s right to pursue abundance.
Explore more of Kim Stanley Robinson on Zero:
- Kim Stanley Robinson imagines utopia in 2025
- How a utopian sci-fi author writes toward a low-carbon future
Other episode in the Imagine series:
- George Saunders goes inside the mind of a climate denier
- Monira Al Qadiri on building monuments to the end of oil
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Sommer Saadi, Mohsis Andam, Sharon Chen and Laura Millan. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Stephen Carroll. |
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| 1:00.8 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, How to Imagine a Better Future. Happy New Year and welcome to 2026. |
| 1:23.3 | I like starting the new year by thinking about a better future. |
| 1:27.2 | And what better way to do that than to hear from someone whose life project has been imagining utopias. |
| 1:34.6 | Kim Stanley Robinson. |
| 1:36.5 | If you're not already familiar with his work, Stan is a sci-fi writer, perhaps best known for his Mars trilogy published in the 1990s. But for the climate |
| 1:45.8 | crowd, it is his 2020 book, Ministry for the Future, that he's best known for. It is one of the |
| 1:52.2 | boldest and most imaginative works of climate fiction. Stan is a big thinker, and he has a remarkable |
| 1:58.9 | ability to put the problems of today and of 100 |
| 2:02.0 | years from now into perspective. He also gives me a sense of realistic optimism and helps me break |
... |
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