Treading Thin Air

by Geoff Mann in Uncertainty and Climate Change….What we need is a much more honest assessment of what we do not or cannot know, which is, among other important things, where the edge is. We might, in fact, be past it already, treading thin air like Wile E. Coyote before the fall. Today’s politicians don’t like uncertainty: it introduces doubt. Yet we are in desperate need of a politics that looks catastrophic uncertainty square in the face.

Prefixing the world

by Jonathan Rowson in Perspectiva…The metacrisis is the historically specific threat to truth, beauty, and goodness caused by our persistent misunderstanding, misvaluing, and misappropriating of reality. The metacrisis is the crisis within and between all the world’s major crises, a root cause that is at once singular and plural, a multi-faceted delusion arising from the spiritual and material exhaustion of modernity that permeates the world’s interrelated challenges and manifests institutionally and culturally to the detriment of life on earth.

Keep humanity’s future in sight and integrate the polycrisis lens

Keep humanity’s future in sight and integrate the polycrisis lens

from transformphilanthropy.wingsweb.org….The climate crisis is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. However, only a tiny fraction of global philanthropic funding is dedicated to combating climate change effects, with some estimates as low as 2%. Most philanthropic funders already dedicated to other social issues do not feel they can divert resources at this stage.

Heat is not a metaphor

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Harpers Bazaar….Let me be clear: “Living on a menopausal planet” does not mean the extreme heat we are experiencing is just a natural part of Earth’s life cycle, as climate-change deniers claim. The volatile temperatures we are experiencing are a result of toxic human actions—just like the hot flashes experienced by menopausal people (many women, many gender-expansive people, anyone who has ever had a uterus or ovaries or stewarded the hormone estrogen) may be impacted by the prevalence of hormone-injected animals and processed food in our diets.

Where dangerous heat is surging

by Niko Kommenda, et al in the Washington Post….The danger of climate change is often associated with huge disasters: floods, fires, hurricanes. Heat, on the other hand, is a creeping, quieter risk — but one that is already transforming lives around the world.

The fear of a nuclear fire that would consume Earth

by Thomas Moynihan at BBC.com…..Perhaps the lesson for AI is that the dramatic risks should command our attention, but so too should the more tangible, less attention-grabbing, ones. Neither should cancel the other out, especially when – once again – our world is possibly at stake.

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...
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The futures triangle

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Mar 26 2024

The eco-civilization framework

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Dancing with a permanent emergency

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The European Union’s economic security strategy update

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Mar 21 2024

Led by Its Youth, U.S. Sinks in World Happiness Report

For the first time since the first World Happiness Report was issued in 2012, the United States was not ranked among the world’s Top 20 happiest countries. The drop was...
Mar 19 2024

The Eco-Civilization Framework

As the planet burns, authoritarian populists dominate politics, oil executives direct the COP process, and the wealthy elite pull further away from everyone else, it is...
Mar 18 2024

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...
Mar 18 2024

“Lean Weaving”: Creating networks for a future of resilience and regeneration

by Curtis Ogden in the International Institute for Social Change….“The more flexible the sub-systems, the longer the expected life of the system as a...
Mar 18 2024

Chartbook 268: “How can we not know?”: CAR and the challenge of tracking a silent crisis.

By Adam Tooze in Chartbook 268…It was at a moment when many of us were discussing the polycrisis as a concept with which to grasp the current world. Was an...
Mar 18 2024

History’s crisis detectives: How we’re using maths and data to reveal why societies collapse – and clues about the future

by Daniel Hoyer in The Conversation….Our goal is to find out what drove these societies into crisis, and then what factors seem to have determined whether people...