Kind of being pedantic about definition of "plot" or "plot point".
Isn't this whole book about climate change?
And the character experiences a climate 'event', that impacts the direction of the story? Changes their perspective?
"There's a common misconception that a plot point is anything that happens in a story. In this way, people often confuse a plot point for a story beat. Story beats are the smallest units of storytelling, allowing you to break down a story into small parts without looking at individual paragraphs or sentences.
A plot point, on the other hand, marks a major turning point in the plot. So a story beat and a plot point will overlap, but not every story beat is a plot. There are far more story beats than plot points in a given story."
> Kind of being pedantic about definition of "plot" or "plot point".
> Isn't this whole book about climate change?
Wouldn't that be called the theme of the book? There are several interwoven plots, the main one being the story of the Ministry and of the people working for it.
Just arguing around definitions of words at this point. What is a "plot" versus "theme" versus "just an incident" verses "plot point".
If you want to say there are several 'plots', thus the book's 'plot', is not climate change, because climate change is really an overall 'theme', but not a plot.
I took the previous discussion to mean, that there was an event with a wet-bulb incident, and this one 'incident' could be a 'plot point' in one of the plots. And guess overall theme of the book is around climate, which is on display with the wet-bulb 'plot'?
So guess, if you are saying I was incorrect because there are several 'plots', thus I can't say "the plot of the book is climate change". Ok. I'm ok with using the word "theme" instead.
Edit:
Guess I would say the 'plot' of "World War Z" is a 'realistic interpretation of a zombie outbreak'. But, it was all short stories, so not really a 'plot'. But a theme.
Maybe the word plot is problem. Means one thing in vernacular, but does mean something more detailed to an English major.
The grid is going to have to undergo huge evolution, but increasingly corruption and political gridlock make that unreliable.
Plus home solar empowers you from centralized control and functions as the only free market alternative to the regulatory captured grid infrastructure.
Home storage with sodium ion and hopefully in 2-4 years sodium sulfur will drop costs 50%.
Also, your car an function as a secondary battery storage.
Yes. Also radiative cooling. Lawns literally suck here too, we need more trees and bushes, biomass fixation, in personal homes, for shade and drought resistance. And massive, diverse reforestation to replete ground water reserves and stabilize the local weather.
We also need to massively invest in poor countries' ability to survive too. Or else conflicts will spread to us regardless of our own resilience.
I'm convinced that there is a contingent in society that has crossed both side of the political spectrum that is increasingly less empathetic to assisting poorer regions of the world as the negative effects of climate change start setting in, and its only going to grow
Its anecdotal, but my very progressive friends (think: Bernie Sanders type voters) have over time subtly started expressing opinions that are regressive to world assistance.
Namely, an attitude that nations should reap what they sow. They equate ecological devastation in poor countries almost solely to the inability of those countries leaders to do anything effective or sustaining. While they aren't wrong per se, its in ignorance or disregard of other broader factors.
All this is to say, I hold little hope that poor countries will receive much aid from richer ones unless they already have something useful to trade
The world is definitely going to heavily deglobalize. Globalization of general trade piggybacked specifically on the US Navy securing petroleum shipping.
With the bakken shake and alternate energy vastly decreasing the geopolitical significance of oil shipping, and the possible demographic and totalitarian collapse of China, manufacturing will near shore in the coming decades.
If the human race was capable of proactively mitigating global warming effects on the poor, it would be capable of mitigating global warming itself. Since we cannot, the poor are going to be some object to a simpler, cruel calculus.
We saw this in the Syrian crisis which is about 1/100 the scale of probable displacements to come
I can understand why even Bernie Sanders type voters start "victim blaming".. all humans are selfish creatures, and we sure don't want to give up our comforts more than we'd like. Recycling, switching to EVs and LEDs, well, most people are comfortable with that. Never fly to Rome or Thailand again? "But I need to..!", some will say. And sooner or later we'll start justifying their selfishness by saying it's not our fault that Indians are dying in heatwaves (then again, technically it's not my singular fault, maybe the fault of the system that's given me a comfortable life plus luxuries like trips to Rome and Thailand...)
I know this isn't the point of your reply, which I agree with the point its making, but I often wonder if there is a way to do green sailing both economically and fast enough that taking say, a 3 day sail to other countries becomes the norm rather than flying everywhere, baked into the experience of a vacation as it were.
Even if we could simply limit air travel to critical business only, it'd be a dramatic step in the right direction on multiple fronts (pollution, reducing C02 emissions etc)
Generally, ships are incredibly effective means of transportation. "Green", or not.
At least in northern Europe, you are often confronted with this sentiment of condemning oh-so-bad imported fruits from afar (Checkmate, Avocado!), when really most of the CO2 emissions are due to the first and last few kilometers of travel by fossil-fueled trucks. The thousands of kilometers across the ocean are almost negligible. Eating an apple grown in New Zealand or northern Germany makes almost no difference in regard to CO2.
Really, the downside of ships is not the CO2 emissions at all. Sail, or not. We don't use them as much for personal transportation, because they are slow as fuck in comparison to trains, busses/cars and planes. Most people just don't want to spend a week or two looking at the same endless water, when crossing the Atlantic. (If you want to travel the world like this, maybe reach out to a container line!)
On land, we need more cheap and frequent high speed trains connecting countries! Night trains and busses with beds and all again, too.
Self driving EV semis will do the job of night trains with low zero carbon. Self driving on highways should be very achievable with route specific AI, convergent infrastructure like sensors and more wildlife fences and networked status reporting.
Last mile delivery trucks will be the first commercial vehicles to electrify.
The real downside of long haul shipping is the race to the bottom arbitrage of loose environment regulations and enforcement.
Ministry For The Future was far too optimistic. Termination Shock presents how late stage capitalism and the accelerationists would team up to make money on half-baked science to save the planet. The West will probably be fine but we're going to make Mao and Stalin look like amateur hour mass murderers when we finally save our own butts.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future