by Lynn Murphy and Alnoor Ladha in Aljazeera….Philanthropic endowments are designed to protect the financial interests of the 1 percent. They should be taxed.
How to thrive in an uncertain world
by Maggie Jackson in The New York Times…Humans naturally need answers and so typically find uncertainty aversive. With a presidential election, war erupting in multiple zones, rising climate volatility and myriad other types of flux, it’s easy to feel overwhelming angst for the future and see certainty as a beacon in a darkening time.
Noam Chomsky and Andrea Moro on the limits of our comprehension
“The sudden awareness of something that calls for an explanation, once the fog of habit has lifted, seems to be the real stuff revolutions’ sparkles are made of.”
Global Risks Report 2024
from the World Economic Forum….As we enter 2024, 2023-2024 GRPS results highlight a predominantly negative outlook for the world over the next two years that is expected to worsen over the next decade
Embracing local knowledge is the key to resilience in northern Kenya, not project box-ticking
by Ian Scoones in The New Humanitatian…‘In the welter of jargon-heavy policy documents promoting ‘resilience-building’, the big question remains – what is ‘resilience’, and for whom?’
How Octavia Butler told the future
by Tiya Miles in The Atlantic…We need her conception of “histofuturism” now more than ever.
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.
A year in crises
by Tim Sahay in Phenomenal World…https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/a-year-in-crises.
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...
Jan
14
2025
Wanted: An early-warning system for the end of the world
by Charlie Cooper in Politico…Some experts believe we could hit catastrophic climate ‘tipping points’ in a matter of years. The U.K. government, with a bit of...
Jan
13
2025
Worlds within Us: Wisdom and Resilience of Indigenous Women Elders
How does one measure the intentions of a life? This is a question that Tekatsi:tsia’ kwa Katsi Cook (Wolf Clan, Mohawk Nation, New York) asks in her...
Jan
13
2025
Hope in the Face of the Polycrisis
by Jacob Bornstein & Mesa Sebree in Mediators Foundation…Historically, the leading causes of mass disruption across the world can be boiled down to the...
Jan
13
2025
Climate change forged a new reality in 2024: ‘This is life now’
by Diana Baptista in Context…In 2024, billions of people endured heatwaves, storms and floods; 2025 is set to be worse as man-made climate change wreaks...
Dec
30
2024
Policy brief: Nature for resilience
From UNDRR….Healthy and resilient ecosystems are key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the objectives of the Sendai Framework for Disaster...
Dec
29
2024
Great power politics Adam Tooze on Bidenomics
by Adam Tooze in London Review of Books…America’s more liberal-minded spokespeople may talk about America limiting itself to defending a small yard with a high...
Dec
28
2024
The Regeneration Handbook: System-changing strategies
by Don Hall in Resilience.org…CATL supports them all by organizing events, creating educational resources, facilitating collaboration and resource sharing, and...
Dec
27
2024
Derailment risk: A systems analysis that identifies risks which could derail the sustainability transition
by Laurie Laybourn in Earth Systems Dynamics…How will the effects of climate change, nature loss, and other environmental change impact our ability to tackle the...
Dec
26
2024
Looking Back at the Future of Humanity Institute
by Tom Ough in Asteriskmag.com…The rise and fall of the influential, embattled Oxford research center that brought us the concept of existential risk.
Dec
21
2024
Responding to platform firm power: differing national responses
by Angela Garcia Calvo in New Political Economy…In the second half of the 1990s, the commercial internet emerged as a remarkable connectivity tool that promised...