 Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be a part of the ABS conference this year, and I appreciate you taking the time to listen. My name is Justice Hagen, and I'm a faculty member of the English Department at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most of my teaching and writing is in 20th and 21st century literary and cultural studies as science fiction. I am also part of the affiliated global faculty for the Bahá'í Institute of Higher Education, where I teach American and British literature courses. I began working with the Association of Bahá'í Studies last year, and have focused most of my attention on the work ABS is doing related to the climate crisis, with my own contributions being focused on the area of climate crisis narratives. And I have had the opportunity to speak to Bahá'ís around the world about the climate crisis, who are working in related professional and academic fields. This has been a particularly enriching experience for me, and has also showed me a wide range of approaches that Bahá'ís are taking toward the climate crisis. In this talk, and keeping with my own academic approach in the area of literary studies, I will identify some of the narrative elements of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, a groundbreaking climate crisis novel that pertains to some of the conversations that I have seen at work in the Bahá'í community. Identifying how narratives can be built upon immediate and relentless activism, while also preserving a unified message for humanity, is something that can serve as an important model for our own community, which still has a way to go in fully participating in climate crisis discourse. When it was published in October of 2020, literary studies faculty around the world were struck by Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. Robinson, one of the most celebrated science fiction writers working today, has long been known for stories that focus on inspiring possibilities, and Ministry for the Future might be his most inspiring work yet. The story of Ministry for the Future begins with a heatwave that kills millions in a densely populated Indian city. For many readers, this opening chapter stuck with us for a long time. The purpose of the chapter was to demonstrate the seriousness of the climate crisis, and how soon into our future major losses of life will begin to occur from the way that we have damaged the biosphere of the Earth. Death is a frequent part of the Ministry for the Future, and it comes in the form of both natural disasters made more serious by the realities of the climate crisis, as well as the violent actions of people who are desperate to curtail the actions of states and corporations that contribute to, and are arguably at the core of, climate change. But hope is also present in the story, and plays an even larger role in the darkness and the death of the unfolding climate crisis. Kim Stanley Robinson creates a narrative of immediate and extreme progress in the Ministry for the Future, writing a world in which the vast majority of humanity comes together to make the necessary changes to save the planet. While some of the solutions imagined by Robinson, like the carbon coin, and imagined currency earned by states, institutions and individuals who engage in carbon sequestration, may not yet be part of our reality, other solutions such as the Mondragon economic system and the refreezing of water in the Arctic, are practices being studied and implemented even now in the real world. By shouldering the massive burden of shifting the political and economic course of the world toward a sustainable environment, the generation at the helm of the Ministry for the Future isn't exhausted and traumatized one, but it's a price happily paid for our collective future. Continuing this practice of articulating hopeful possibilities for our species, and turning that practice toward meaningful changes to society that result in unification rather than division, Robinson has written a book much in accordance with the teachings of the Baha'i Faith, and that's because much like our community has over the past nearly two centuries, Robinson's book is not afraid of confronting difficult realities while paving this path toward unity. In the Ministry for the Future, we see actions taken on the individual, local, regional, national and global level that move the whole of our civilization forward, and it's not difficult to see a reflection there of a Baha'i methodology or approach. I've said to friends in ABS before that Robinson wrote the great Baha'i novel before Baha'i managed to write it. As I mentioned, most of my endeavors as part of ABS have focused on the subject of the climate crisis as it is manifested in contemporary literature, specifically in 21st century speculative fiction, including Ministry for the Future. There is clearly a significant reservoir of interest and talent in the Baha'i community related to stopping the lasting damage being done to the biosphere from a variety of approaches. Leading little doubt that, as a community, we have valuable perspectives to offer the rest of humanity as we seek a path toward preserving and repairing the ecosystem. Though this work has been and will continue to be very valuable, I have often been struck by the reticence of some of the Baha'is I have spoken with to tackle the principal causes of the level that the climate crisis has reached in recent years and decades, namely governments and corporations and the unfettered capitalist priorities they pursue. It's not that these friends fail to acknowledge them, but that they typically try to reorient the conversation in a way that avoids conflict and centers on those comfortable areas of society, the individual and the local community. The interdisciplinary field of climate change research has long established that personal, individual lifestyle changes will not make enough of an impact on carbon emissions that are driven primarily by industries and the governmental deregulation and protection of those industries to save the biosphere. Yet these friends still hesitate to engage in that dimension of the discourse and return to the individual and the local community as the places where meaningful progress can be made to combat climate change. In other words, they want to focus on changing individual and community priorities at the grassroots level in the hope that it will change industry and policy at the national and international level and want little to nothing to do with calls for immediate economic and policy reform. Part of their caution is understandable. The teachings of the faith direct us toward efforts that disarm conflict and pointing a finger of blame typically does not sit well with us as a community. Further, given the relatively small population of the faith, drawing attention to ourselves through what some Baha'is might see as radical proclamations that draw lines of distinction rather than efforts to bring everyone together may not represent the preferred method of approach for many in the faith. But as I mentioned before, as a community we are not unfamiliar with making difficult decisions and confronting controversial ideas. And this area of the climate crisis is another one that could use our strength. One of the reasons that I have heard some Baha'is express caution when it comes speaking out directly against corporations, institutions and governments is that that is not where our energy should be directed. Instead, they think that we should focus on local community action, education, raising a new generation to be conscientious members of society and custodians of the environment. They would seem to believe that advocating for one thing is done to the exclusion of all other things. While in fact, many of the Baha'is that I've spoken to who advocate for more economic and policy changes do not believe that we should stop efforts at the individual and local level at all. For them, it's about adding this new area of discourse into our already established discursed field. In other words, much like Robert's administration for the future, these Baha'i activists want to work at the individual, local and regional level of climate crisis discourse. But they also want to be a part of the national and global conversation about the institutional and systemic causes of the climate crisis. And they are not alone. The international Baha'i community does make overtures at international conferences about the climate crisis. The One Planet, One Habitation Statement recently released by the Baha'i International Community Office does an outstanding job of demonstrating how this can be done. Advocating for individual and community action, as well as intervening in the international legislative discourse with proposals for exploration on how to restructure current economic and policy systems. For such a relatively small global population, we as Baha'is have an impressive international presence, working with the UN and other international legislative bodies and NGOs around the world. While, for example, American citizens who want to participate in the national and global discussions about how to help solve the climate crisis typically have no recourse other than to write letters or make phone calls to their political representatives who often give constituents little, if any, attention. The personal ties that bind our Baha'i community together shorten the distance between individual Baha'is and organizations like the Baha'i International Community Office. Because of this, each individual Baha'i voice can lend itself to a collective voice that is heard in places where other communities struggle to be noticed at all. There are scientists and activists and scholars around the world who are waiting for allies in the fight against the climate crisis. And the Baha'i activists and scholars who want us to engage more on that global level are not asking us to abandon our local community endeavors, but to expand our efforts to others who are also in need of our help. The Ministry for the Future changed the climate crisis discourse and literary studies not by showing us another bleak dystopian future where exclusive interests destroyed any chance of saving the planet, but by preempting that darkness with a vision of the future where local and global conversations and efforts are equally prioritized. In the novel, the Ministry for the Future was created during a dark time to work tirelessly to ensure a world for future generations of humanity. And that sounds a lot like the faith to me. If you're interested in learning more, please take some time to read some of the scholarship that I have made available here. And please also reach out to me with any further questions that you might have about the genre of climate crisis narratives. I look forward to serving alongside you all as we work to stop the destruction of the biosphere and heal our world. Thank you.