~ 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...
A starting point for degrowth: The Costa Rica “Pura Vida” meaning
By Juan Ignacio Marín Degrowth is a theory, a movement, and a practice with a long and distinguished history. The excellent Wikipedia article (worth consulting) starts this way: Degrowth or post-growth economics is an academic and social movement critical of the...
“Lean Weaving”: Creating networks for a future of resilience and regeneration
Lean (network) weaving (a new term?) would focus on helping to create more intricate, high quality/high trust and diverse connections as well as facilitating robust, nourishing flows in tighter and more grounded cycles and systems. Part of the lean weaving would...
Chartbook 268: “How can we not know?”: CAR and the challenge of tracking a silent crisis.
With the war in Ukraine raging, what Williams was calling attention to was the lethal accumulation of risks happening at the same time in Africa, as a result of climate change, political conflict and the surge in food and energy prices. ADAM TOOZE Read full article in...
History’s crisis detectives: How we’re using maths and data to reveal why societies collapse – and clues about the future
The aim is to treat history as a “natural” science, using statistical methods, computational simulations and other tools adapted from evolutionary theory, physics and complexity science to understand why things happened the way that they did. By turning...
Global energy-related CO2 emissions hit record high in 2023 – IEA
Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) hit a record high last year, driven partly by increased fossil fuel use in countries where droughts hampered hydropower production, International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. Reuters Read full article in...
Crop insurance costs explode
If crop insurance payments to Canadian farmers were put on a line graph, from 2018 to 2022 the graph would look like a hockey stick. Statistics Canada data shows that crop insurance gross payments were $890 million in 2018. By 2021 that figure had climbed to $3.8...
Forget the partisan hype, Aust farmers are preparing for the extremes of climate change
Australia’s farmers are “doing amazing things” and rising to the climate challenge by adopting a deep level of strategic thinking to almost everything they do, according to a new survey on resilience in agriculture. Jamie Seidel Read full article in Cosmos Magazine by...
Pivotal moment for humanity as disasters threaten to converge
A new review of literature on global climate change written by an international team of more than 200 researchers leaves no room for doubt: humanity is heading for disaster, unless significant steps are taken to change that course. David Nield Read full article in...
What a major solar storm could do to our planet
Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it? Kathryn Schulz Read full article in The New Yorker by Kathryn Schulz
Systemic wisdom for and beyond systems change – A critical systems perspective convening not only indigenous traditions of wisdom
Embracing indigenous wisdom traditions promises to successfully meet the challenges of the Anthropocene in the 21st century. They seem to bring what is needed to overcome the limits of the project managerial activism associated with systems change. However, wisdom is...
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.