by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Polycrisis
‘Permacrisis’, a term that describes ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’, has been named Collins Word of the Year 2022. It is one of several words Collins highlights that relate to ongoing crises the UK and the world have faced and continue to face,...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Environment
The official timeline of Earth’s history — from the oldest rocks to the dinosaurs to the rise of primates, from the Paleozoic to the Jurassic and all points before and since — could soon include the age of nuclear weapons, human-caused climate change and the...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Polycrisis
Commentators increasingly warn that the world is tightly bound in a “polycrisis,” a tangled knot of crises spanning global systems. But if we have any hope of escaping it, we must think more carefully about what polycrisis really means. Michael Murray...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Environment
A new study that uses 25 years of data from Australia suggests that environmental changes have been driving viral spillovers by radically altering the ecology of black flying foxes. Emily Anthes Read the full article by Emily Anthes in The New York...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Environment
Shootings were already known to peak in summer, when people are outside more and when heat can increase aggression. But the new research took account of the season and showed that above average temperatures at any time of year increased the risk of shootings. Damian...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Resilience
The era we are now in the midst of might be defined, most notably, by the omnipresence of disaster. Plagues, droughts, floods, toxic air and water, wars, massacres, famines, earthquakes, heat waves, wildfires, recessions, dust storms, despotism — slow-motion...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Worldviews
An age where inflection points were hit — and after that, certain forms of decline, if not collapse, began to become irreversible, gather a pace and momentum all their own. If it feels like the world’s out of control these days — welcome to the Age of Inflection....
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Environment
In what year will the human population grow too large for the Earth to sustain? The answer is about 1970, according to research by the World Wildlife Fund. In 1970, the planet’s 3 and a half-billion people were sustainable. But on this New Year’s Day, the population...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Environment
It is striking that in the same year that Tesla’s stock price dropped by about two-thirds, destroying more than $700 billion in market value, the global market for electric vehicles — which for so long the company seemed almost to embody — actually boomed. David...
by Omega | Jan 16, 2023 | Polycrisis
It seems as if the world is encountering a “perfect storm” of simultaneous crises: The coronavirus pandemic is approaching the end of its third year; the war in Ukraine is threatening to go nuclear; extreme climate events are afflicting North America, Europe, Asia and...
