If you watched the excellent series on the Chernobyl disaster, you can see with perfect hindsight why many say that Chernobyl was the proximate cause for the collapse of the Soviet Union. You can see it in the way incentives drove bad decisions, which reinforced each other. This is what complexity science calls a positive feedback loop. The recent winter storms in Texas offer another teachable moment, illustrating how failures in one system cascade over to other systems. Freezing rain and snow break the electric and heating grid. Pipes break and the water system collapses. Transport stalls and stores are not restocked. An already overstrained health system drops more services. The science points to more of these breakdowns-–and, let’s be clear, there is no credible dissent to the science. In this light, isn’t it time to prepare for it “just in case”?
David Bonbright
Read We’re Living in a Global Polycrisis: It’s Time to Build Resiliency, by David Bonbright, in Giving Compass.
