Why the world needs its own immune system

by Atul Gawande in The New York Times…A global immune system must be built for speed. Speed in detecting that a pattern of illness might be unusual and dangerous. Speed in diagnosis. Speed in alerting public health officials and tracing the path of exposure. Speed in getting treatment to the sick and preventive measures to the well.

An ancient Chinese text that’s surprisingly relevant today

by Richard Heinberg in Resilience.org….I’ll leave the last words to the Old Master, this time from the Bahm translation:
Whenever someone sets out to remold the world, experience teaches that he is bound to fail.
For Nature is already as good as it can be.
It cannot be improved upon.
He who tries to redesign it, spoils it.
He who tries to redirect it, misleads it.

Visualizing the top global risks in 2024

from the World Economic Forum….From a broader perspective, key structural forces are influencing global risks looking ahead. They include technological acceleration, climate change, shifts in geopolitical power, and a widening demographic divide.

Nate Hagen’s end of year look at 2024

by Eric Lee in Medicum.com….So I’m not going to apologize that the following short reflection is is on the dark side. I’m trying to describe what ’24 may look like. And there’s a lot of things that are converging.

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...
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...
Mar 18 2024

Global energy-related CO2 emissions hit record high in 2023 – IEA

by Reuters in Climate Home News…Global emissions from energy rose by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1%, in 2023 to 37.4 billion tonnes, hitting a record hight

Mar 18 2024

Crop insurance costs explode

by Robert Arnason in The Western Producer…Those massive payments are connected to the severe drought of 2021, which crushed crop yields across much of Western...
Mar 18 2024

Forget the partisan hype, Aust farmers are preparing for the extremes of climate change

by Jamie Seidel in Cosmos Magazine…Farmers consider the animal breeds and crop types they produce to be flexible choices. Others are prepared to relocate...
Mar 18 2024

Pivotal moment for humanity as disasters threaten to converge

by David Nield in Science Alert…The researchers warn of a catastrophic loss of crop-growing capacity with up to half the global area for growing wheat and maize...
Mar 18 2024

What a major solar storm could do to our planet

by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker…Scientists can’t predict what will happen in space. All they can do is try to identify a threat quickly enough to minimize its...
Mar 04 2024

Systemic wisdom for and beyond systems change – A critical systems perspective convening not only indigenous traditions of wisdom

by Louis Klein in EUSG.org…Systemic wisdom facilitates the re-entry of trust and love into science. And though this challenges the modern worldviews and the...