Research shows people who speak another language are more utilitarian and flexible, less risk-averse and egotistical, and better able to cope with traumatic memories
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.
I want a better catastrophe
by Andrew Boyd in bettercatastrophe.com…The apocolypse is already happening.
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.
America is using up its groundwater like there’s no tomorrow
By Mira Rojanasakul et al, in The New York Times…..“From an objective standpoint, this is a crisis,” said Warigia Bowman, a law professor and water expert at the University of Tulsa. “There will be parts of the U.S. that run out of drinking water.”
What the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want you to know
In TedX with Al Gore……In a blistering talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore looks at the two main obstacles to climate solutions and gives his view of how we might actually solve the environmental crisis in time. You won’t want to miss his searing indictment of fossil fuel companies for walking back their climate commitments — and his call for a global rethink of the roles of polluting industries in politics and finance.
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...