~ WEBINAR EVENT SERIES CO-SPONSORS ~
The FAN Initiative, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere, The Resilience Project & The New School at Commonwealth
Ghastly Discussions & Response
Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement
Multiple global crises—including the pandemic, climate change, and Russia’s war on Ukraine—have recently linked together in ways that are significant in scope, devastating in effect, but poorly understood. Dr. Michael Lawrence, a Fellow at the Cascade Institute Read...
Yuval Noah Harari on the eclipsing of human intelligence
Humans are good learners and teachers, constantly gathering information, archiving, and sharing knowledge. So why, after building the most sophisticated information technology in history, are we on the verge of destroying ourselves? We know more than ever before. But...
How rising global heat connects catastrophic floods on four continents
Typhoons triggered landslides across Southeast Asia and inundated Shanghai. A slow-moving storm, unusual for this time of year, sent a deluge over Central Europe. Months of floods wore on in northern and central Africa as rain continued to fall on landscapes that are...
Scaling: The state of play in AI
Now feels like a good time to lay out where we are with AI, and what might come next. I want to focus purely on the capabilities of AI models, and specifically the Large Language Models that power chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. These models keep getting “smarter”...
Facing global risks with honest hope
This is a report about our individual and organizational capacity to incite change. It explores how we assess and respond to systemic risks and outlines pragmatic next steps for decision-makers in policy, finance, and philanthropy and at the community level. Shaped by...
Superbugs ‘could kill 39m people by 2050’ amid rising drug resistance
While deaths linked to drug resistance are declining among very young children, driven by improvements in vaccination and hygiene, the study found the opposite trend for their grandparents. By the middle of the century, 1.91 million people a year are forecast to die...
Global trends are polarizing us: Can democracy handle it?
Big problems don’t always polarize societies. Indeed, having an external enemy can cause a society to increase its internal levels of trust and coherence. Moreover, societies can be destabilized without becoming polarized: a pandemic or natural disaster can...
National resilience guidance: A collaborative approach to building resilience
The United States today faces an increasingly complex set of challenges. Disruptions from a range of acuteincidents (also called shocks), such as natural disasters, pandemics, cyber and physical attacks, infrastructurefailure, and sudden loss of key industries, are...
Publication: Extreme temperatures and the profitability of large European firms
In this paper, we analyze the impact of temperature exposure on the earnings per share of large European firms over the 21st century. Our findings reveal that earnings are sensitive to extreme temperatures across a large proportion of sectors. Depending on the sector...
A few rules for predicting the future by Octavia E. Butler
How many combinations of unintended consequences and human reactions to them does it take to detour us into a future that seems to defy any obvious trend? Not many. That’s why predicting the future accurately is so difficult. Some of the most mistaken predictions I’ve...
The U.S. needs to pay more attention to electronic warfare
When I talk about U.S.-China competition, I usually talk about the economic side of things — industrial policy, export controls, tariffs, and so on. But it’s also important to think about how economic strength can and should be translated into military power — after...
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Paul R. Ehrlich, Andrew Beattie, Gerardo Ceballos, Eileen Crist, Joan Diamond,Rodolfo Dirzo, Anne H. Ehrlich, John Harte, Mary Ellen Harte, Graham Pyke, Peter H. Raven1 William J. Ripple, Frédérik Saltré Christine Turnbull, Mathis Wackernagel and Daniel T. Blumstei
An international group of 17 leading physical and social scientists, including OMEGA Advisory Board member Joan Diamond, have produced a comprehensive yet concise assessment of the state of civilization, warning that the outlook is more dire and dangerous than is generally understood.
The paper has generated over a thousand media articles and interviews which suggests that public interest is extremely high despite competing news– insurrection, inauguration, and pandemic.
This Ghastly study has been covered in media organizations including CNN World, Reuters, The Guardian, International Business Times, Taipei Times, The Irish Times, and the University of California among many others.
See full article published by Frontiers in Conservation Science, 13 Janurary 2021.