by Prof Jim Hall of Oxford University….A new Global Resilience Index, developed by researchers at the Environmental Change Institute, is helping policy makers understand climate risks to global infrastructure systems and plan appropriate investments and interventions.
The ‘flickering’ of Earth systems is warning us: act now, or see our already degraded paradise lost
by George Monbiot in The Guardian…Every hour is now an “if only” moment: offering a better chance of avoiding collapse than the hour that follows. Grim as our time on Earth is, future generations will look back on it as a golden age. A golden age of wildlife, of mild weather, stability, prosperity, of opportunities to act. Our living world is a grey shadow of what it once was, but a vibrant paradise in comparison with what it will be. Unless, unless.
Advancing the conversation around building a resilient future
Answer from Nathanial in the interview…..Innovation, knowledge and policy are key interlinked areas for GRP to ensure that we advance and strengthen resilience. Embracing resilience encourages innovation in finding new and flexible solutions that can adapt to changing circumstances. This fosters a culture of experimentation and learning, which is essential for addressing complex challenges effectively. A strong scientifically-backed understanding of resilience, including measuring and testing resilience is also fundamental. This includes ensuring that resilience encompasses more than just “bouncing back” to the status quo, but that it also encompasses adaptive and transformative capacities and allows systems to continue to evolve in spite of shocks and stresses.
2023 Executive Summary
from the Executive Summary UNEHS…Today, we are moving perilously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points. Human actions are behind this rapid and fundamental change to the planet. We are introducing new risks and amplifying existing ones by indiscriminately extracting our water resources, damaging nature and biodiversity, polluting both Earth and space, and destroying our tools and options to deal with disaster risk.
Climate change has toppled some civilizations but not others. Why?
by Kate Yoder in Grist…Of course, there’s no guarantee that a better system will replace the vulnerable, unequal one after a collapse. “You still have to do the work of putting in the reforms, and having the support of those in power, to be able to actually set and reinforce these kinds of revisions,” Hoyer said. “So I would argue, if that’s the case, let’s just do that without the violence to begin with.”
Rehabilitating Lahaina
by Travis Hartman, et al. in Reuters…After Hawaii’s worst wildfire killed scores of people in August, local and federal agencies are reckoning with the toxic chemicals created when a built environment burns
The world’s top industrial countries are in treacherous waters
by Richard Heinberg in Resilience.org…Whatever is coming will be as historically unique as our present circumstances. The ever-louder rumblings from just over the horizon suggest that, whatever it is, it’s not far off.
Drought in Brazil’s Amazon reveals ancient engravings
in Phys.org…”Unhappily it is now reappearing with the worsening of the drought,” Carneiro said. “Having our rivers back (flooded) and keeping the engravings submerged will help preserve them, even more than our work.”
The Nose Is For Eating Too
by Gita Viswanath in On Eating….Defying the doctor’s predictions, mother recovered sufficiently enough to get rid of the NG tube. Alas! She insists she cannot taste anything now!
Why so much is going wrong at the same time
By Thomas Homer-Dixon on The Cascade Institute…Most obviously, given that Earth’s worsening energy imbalance seems to be emerging as the single most powerful driver of crises across multiple ecological, economic, and social systems, humanity needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions to near zero as fast as possible. Realistically, though, we won’t cut them deeply enough soon enough to keep the imbalance from having devastating impacts, not least on the world’s food supply.
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
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...
Jun
10
2025
Reading Octavia Butler in a time of change
by Shady Grove Oliver in AfroLAnews.org…Through her writing, Butler models the concept of having a found family – people one chooses to surround themself with for...
Jun
10
2025
Navigating complexity: Embracing the human pace
by Dark Matter Labs on Medium…Many-to-Many is designed for groups who want to collaborate to solve complex challenges but require new ideas about value,...
Jun
10
2025
Critical responses to global systemic risk in an era of polycrisis
by Ruth Richardson in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science…As grand challenges intensify and intersect across the globe, policymakers and decision...