North America’s biggest city is running out of water
by Caroline Houck in Vox…..Mexico City is staring down a water crisis. It won’t be the last city to do so.
Scorching heatwave ravages Southeast Asia’s food supplies, imperiling the poor
from Dimsum Daily-Hong Kong….And in a vicious spiral, the compounding nutritional deprivation and socio-economic dislocation unleashed by heatwave-driven price shocks and crop failures create fertile conditions for civil unrest, political upheavals and even armed conflicts – all of which merely deepen humanitarian emergencies.
Here’s what record-breaking temperatures looked like around the globe
by Sueellen Campbell in Yale Climate Connections…..Climate change is affecting every continent and the oceans.
Critical minerals, food crops at risk of climate disruption by 2050, report shows
by Darren Parker in Mining Weekly…More than 70% of critical minerals needed for the transition to net zero emissions will be at risk from climate disruption by 2050, professional services firm PwC says.
European summers will be hotter than predicted because of cleaner air
by Michael Le Page in the New Scientist…By ignoring declining air pollution, regional climate models have greatly underestimated how hot Europe’s summers and heatwaves will become
‘Inside an oven’: sweltering heat ravages crops and takes lives in south-east Asia
by Rebecca Ratcliffe in The Guardian….Governments issue health warnings as schools shut and crops fail, with fears that worse is to come as heatwave tightens grip
Biden and the spectre of polycrisis
by Edward Luce in Financial Times….So many crises assail the world that their spilling into each other and merging is a genuine risk
Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness
by Fran H Norris, et al. in Am J or Community Psych…..To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.
The flooding will come “No Matter What”
by Abrahm Lustgarten in Propublica…The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway.
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
by Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine…The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
A national security insider does the math on the dangers of AI
by Lauren Goode in Wired…..Jason Matheny, CEO of the influential think tank Rand Corporation, says advances in AI are making it easier to learn how to build biological weapons and other tools of destruction.
This Japanese shop is 1,020 years old. It knows a bit about surviving crises
by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno in The New York Times….A mochi seller in Kyoto, and many of Japan’s other centuries-old businesses, have endured by putting tradition and stability over profit and growth.
What makes a society more resilient? Frequent hardship.
by Carl Zimmer in The New York Times…..Comparing 30,000 years of human history, researchers found that surviving famine, war or climate change helps groups recover more quickly from future shocks.
These century-old stone “Tsunami Stones” dot Japan’s coastline
by Danny Lewis in Smithsonian Magazine….“Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”
New world order?
by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay in Phenomenal World….At The Polycrisis we have been tracking the whipsaw of the global financial system amid private finance mantras, interest-rate hikes at the Fed, and the explosion of debt in the global South.
Climate crisis → drought → food deficit → migration
by Mohan Mainali in Nepali Times….Half-century of eastern Nepal’s rainfall data points to a link between chronic drought and depopulation