Shortly before she turned 83 last month, she taught an eight-week course, “Practical Utopias,” on Disco, an online learning platform in Canada.
Conflict and climate collide to create an acute hunger crisis for an unprecedented 345 million people
This March, a young mother arrived with 3 children at Dollo Ado in southeastern Ethiopia, where 5 refugee camps currently serve more than 200 000 displaced Somalis.
The collapse of insects
The most diverse group of organisms on the planet are in trouble, with recent research suggesting insect populations are declining at an unprecedented rate.
THE COLLINS WORD OF THE YEAR 2022 IS…
Permacrisis: noun, an extended period of instability and insecurity
For planet Earth, this might be the start of a new age
A panel of experts has spent more than a decade deliberating on how, and whether, to mark a momentous new epoch in geologic time: our own.
‘Polycrisis’ may be a buzzword, but it could help us tackle the world’s woes
Polycrisis is a more accurate term to describe the world’s ongoing crises and how they’re interacting with one another.
Deforestation brings bat-borne virus home to roost
Habitat loss and food shortages have pushed bats into closer proximity to horses and humans, fueling Hendra virus spillover, a new study suggests.
Almost 8,000 US shootings attributed to unseasonable heat
Research suggests climate crisis may contribute to increased gun violence by pushing temperatures beyond normal ranges
In an age of constant disaster, what does it mean to rebuild?
Each catastrophe is a test of what kind of society we’ve built. And each recovery offers a chance, however fleeting, to build another.
Our civilization just hit three great — and ominous — inflection points: (Why the 2020s are) The Age of Inflection
What will history think of this decade? How will it remember it? I think that it’ll come to be thought of as the Age of Inflection.
More in this tag
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...
Jul
10
2025
Global drought hotspots report catalogs severe suffering, economic damage
by United Nations press release…Food, water, energy crises, human tragedies in 2023-2025 detailed in sweeping analysis by U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center...
Jul
09
2025
Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report
by Fiona Harvey in The Guardian…Water shortages hitting crops, energy and health as crisis gathers pace amid climate breakdown
Jul
08
2025
Thinking long-term about infrastructure
by School of International Futures…75 years is a long enough period of time for the world to change in ways that are unanticipated. For this reason, scenarios...
Jul
07
2025
They asked an A.I. chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiraling.
by Kashmir Hill in The New York Times…Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some...
Jul
03
2025
On r/collapse, people are ‘kept abreast of the latest doom’. Its moderators say it’s not for everyone
by Sam Wolfson in The Guardian…‘This is the idea of catabolic collapse: that what we’re living through is a series of crises … It’s not going to be a sudden...
Jul
02
2025
The business of betting on catastrophe
by Susan Erikson in MIT Press…World Bank pandemic bonds paid out only after death tolls passed a threshold. They’re part of a booming market where investors turn...
Jul
01
2025
Can we see our future in China’s cameras?
by Megan K. Stack in The New York Times…It’s not that our government is using the surveillance infrastructure in the same manner as China. It’s that, as far as...
Jun
16
2025
Global wheat yields would be ‘10%’ higher without climate change
by Orla Dwyer in Carbon Brief…Climate science has “done a remarkable job of anticipating global impacts on the main grains and we should continue to rely on this...
Jun
12
2025
Q&A with Jason Pruet
by Kyle Dickman in Los Alamos National Laboratory…For a variety of reasons, government support for big science has been eroding since then. Now, AI is starting to...
Jun
11
2025
The impunity of the unscathed: Risk, elite security, and the rage of MAGA populism
by Nils Gilman in Small Precautions…MAGA, in its rawest form, embodies the fury of those who feel that the burden of these risks has been disproportionately...