Watch EJN’s 2023 #EarthDay webinar on the global polycrisis — what does this newly-popular term mean, why is it important for climate and environmental journalism and how can reporters uncover relevant angles and story ideas?
Adapt or die: Jem Bendell’s radical vision to survive the climate crisis
By Lucy Jones in GQ….The founder of the Deep Adaptation movement – which predicts that climate change will lead to nothing less than social collapse – has divided climate scientists and supercharged protest movements. Critics call him a doomsayer. Others say he’s the only one acknowledging the truth
Artificial Intelligence and The superorganism
Nate Hagens interviews Daniel Schmachtenberger on The Great Simplification….What is the role of intelligence vs wisdom on our current global pathway, and can we change course? Does artificial intelligence have a role to play in creating a more stable system or will it be the tipping point that drives our current one out of control?
Global polycrisis as a pathway for economic transition
By Zack Walsh, Polycrisis Transition Consultancy….This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme (Bureau for Program & Policy Support’s Strategic Innovation Unit & the Inclusive Growth/Chief Economist) and One Project. The purpose of the collaboration is to connect expertise in new economics with an emerging understanding of the global polycrisis. In this first article, we synthesize existing work and identify potential connections between these two fields. We seek to identify economic alternatives that provide systemic and proactive responses to the global polycrisis and propose potential supporting roles for development organizations like the UNDP.
On the ‘Polycrisis’: Part I
by Bo Harvey….“There is no single vital problem, but many vital problems, and it is this complex intersolidarity of problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet that constitutes the number one vital problem.”3
The Desert of the Anthropocene: An ongoing installation from artist Ravi Agarwal
The long engagement is a part of an ongoing investigation into the current state of the nature, both as a crisis which traverses a political realm, but also a cultural contestation of how ‘nature’ is thought of in the era of the Anthropocene.
The worst-case scenario for drought on the Colorado River
By Umair Irfan, Vox.com…One in eight Americans depend on a river that’s disappearing.
Navigating the polycrisis–life in turbulent times
By Michael Lerner, Angle of Vision…The polycrisis has many names—cascading crises, the metacrisis, the permacrisis, the great unraveling, the great simplification, “the end of the world as we know it” [TEOTWAWKI], and more. In Latin America it’s called “eco-social collapse.” The French call it “collapsologie.” Or one can simply call it turbulent times or a rapidly changing world.
Global rice shortage is set to be the biggest in 20 years
There’s a strained supply of rice as a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as weather woes in rice-producing economies like China and Pakistan.
The surprising thing A.I. engineers will tell you if you let them
by Ezra Klein, The New York Times…This is an example of “alignment risk,” the danger that what we want the systems to do and what they will actually do could diverge, and perhaps do so violently. Curbing alignment risk requires curbing the systems themselves, not just the ways we permit people to use them.
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...
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...
Jun
10
2025
Big tech and the US digital-military-industrial complex
by Andrea Coveri, et al, in Intereconomics…The link between Big Tech and the military apparatus brings back traditions of economic thought too often forgotten or...
Jun
10
2025
‘All of his guns will do nothing for him’: lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday
by Aaron Gell in The Guardian…Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known...
Jun
10
2025
Chartbook 380 Trump’s futurism: Elon’s rockets and fewer dolls for “baby girl” – Part I.
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook 380…They characterize Trump’s politics as “end times fascism”, a politics which rather than constructively seeking to form a liveable...
May
14
2025
From polycrisis to metacrisis: a short introduction
by Rufus Pollock and Rosie Bell in Life Itself.org…Our new white paper on the polycrisis and metacrisis: what they are, how they are distinct, how they are...