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 slow-moving stresses to push a global system out of its established equilibrium and into a volatile and harmful state of disequilibrium. We then identify three causal pathways—common stresses, domino effects, and inter-systemic feedbacks—that can connect multiple global systems to produce synchronized crises.
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 companies.
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 natural disasters over the past four decades.
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 the state? How do interactions with the state shape the roles of CSOs seeking to represent vulnerable and marginalised segments of society? And how are CSOs being employed as part of the dominant international aid architecture to maintain ‘business as usual’ and limit state-led crisis response?
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
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 more-than-human world.
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 at least reduce their impact.
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 systemic risks that we face: risks that manifest as extreme global shocks, interconnect with one another, and turn into long-term crises. More often than not, risk assessment is siloed or focused only narrowly on certain issues or “known” problems.
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 companies. These entities typically raise funds by offering shares to local investors, some of whom pitch in as little as a few hundred dollars, then use those funds to purchase, install, and maintain solar photovoltaic arrays and wind turbines. The community as a whole benefits from increased renewable energy production, and small local investors, instead of utility company executives and shareholders, reap the financial benefits.
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 non-linear and are escalating, posing profound challenges to national and international security.
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 weapons. What’s really important is trying to decide what we would need to do if we wanted what we call “technological humanity,” or better said “technologically-dependent humanity,” to survive.