The Cascade Institute is a Canadian research centre addressing the full range of humanity’s converging environmental, economic, political, and technological crises.

Its director is Thomas Homer-Dixon, an award-winning scholar and author with deep experience in using complexity science to anticipate, analyze, and respond to global threats.

The FAN initiative describes the situation: Two hundred years of economic and complexity growth have added immensely to human welfare and security. It has shaped our world-views and expectations of the future. Yet there is widening concern that the conditions that...

The mission of the Global Challenges Foundation is "to prevent, or at least reduce the likelihood, of a catastrophe that would cause the death of over 10% of humanity, or cause damage on a similar scale." Their website offers analysis and research, partnerships, and...

The Road

The Road

OK, this is Cormac McCarthy: it's dark and visually searing. If you’re up for a bleak vision of the future in the hands of an exceptional writer, give this a go. And be forewarned that you're unlikely to erase the images of the father pushing the shopping cart from...

The Dog Stars

The Dog Stars

By Peter Heller Hig’s wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the...

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Jul 06 2023

Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement

by Dr. Michael Lawrence at The Cascade Institute….. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combines with...
Nov 01 2024

The Regeneration Handbook: System-changing strategies

by Don Hall in Resilience.org…Many Transition Initiatives, from Fujino, Japan, to London, England, have started their own community-owned renewable energy...
Oct 31 2024

Insurable losses from natural disasters – how have the numbers changed over the years?

by Terry Gangcuanco in Insurance Business Magazine….Canadian insurtech MyChoice has released a new study showing a sharp rise in insurable losses linked to...
Oct 30 2024

Holding states to account: do humanitarians undermine civil society?

by Zainab Moallin in ODI.org…Are humanitarian efforts, despite their best intentions, diminishing civil society’s capacity to advocate for systemic change with...
Oct 29 2024

AI Snake Oil—A New Book by 2 Princeton University Computer Scientists

by Eric Topol in Ground Truths….A Counter to the Hype and Some Misleading Claims

Oct 28 2024

The Earth Does Not Speak in Prose, A conversation with Paul Kingsnorth

Interviewed by Charlotte Du Cann, Paul Kingsnorth, writer and Dark Mountain co-founder….writes about forging a language that can speak with and for the...
Oct 22 2024

GAR Special Report 2024: Forensic insights for future resilience learning from past disasters

from the GAR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction…If we accept that disasters are neither natural nor inevitable, then we must work to prevent or...
Oct 22 2024

Our polycrisis demands a radically new approach to risk management

By Ruth Richardson in Open Access Government…A fundamental part of the problem is that our current tools and strategies aren’t designed to assess the types of...
Oct 22 2024

The Regeneration Handbook: System-changing strategies

by Don Hall in Resilience.org…Many Transition Initiatives, from Fujino, Japan, to London, England, have started their own community-owned renewable energy...
Oct 22 2024

The security blind spot: Cascading climate impacts and tipping points threaten national security

by Laurie Laybourn, et al. in IPPR…Recent governments have not considered climate change a priority national security issue. But climate-security threats are...
Oct 10 2024

The collapse is coming. Will humanity adapt?

by Peter Watts in The MIT Press…..Now, Homo sapiens of some form or another is going to survive no matter what we do, short of blowing up the planet with nuclear...