by Jeremy Lent in Resilience.org…Whether we can reweave the strands of our unraveling civilization into a flourishing future will only be known on the other side of the turmoil that lies ahead this century. But as each climate disaster brings our current system closer to collapse, we have an overriding obligation to future generations, and to life itself, to shine a directional beacon through the darkness of our times to a potentially brighter future—and to help lay down a trail toward it.
Dancing with a permanent emergency
by Jonathan Rowson in The Joyous Struggle….The climate crisis is still there, and it is a moral imperative to address it and it matters perhaps more than any other single issue matters. And yet, because we are so profoundly stuck, I think our best chance, perhaps our only chance, is to see the climate challenge through the prism of the metacrisis, with all that follows for educational and spiritual innovation, which is why that has become my professional focus. Once we realise that there is no way to act on climate change with the requisite skill, insight, legitimacy, and resolve without contending with the metacrisis, our sense of priority should change. There is, as they say, no way round but through.
The European Union’s economic security strategy update
By Emily Benson in CSIS….As partners advance to this new era of technology-driven economic security agendas, governments will need to work concertedly to break the long-standing barriers between trade policy and national security.
Led by Its Youth, U.S. Sinks in World Happiness Report
For the first time since the first World Happiness Report was issued in 2012, the United States was not ranked among the world’s Top 20 happiest countries. The drop was driven by people under 30. The New York Times Read full article in The New York Times
The Eco-Civilization Framework
As the planet burns, authoritarian populists dominate politics, oil executives direct the COP process, and the wealthy elite pull further away from everyone else, it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the movement for a beneficial future is failing. We...
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 this way: Degrowth or post-growth economics is an academic and social movement critical of the...
“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 whole.”
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 explosion of child deaths the ultimate indicator of crisis?
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 could course-correct to stave off devastation.
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
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
10
2025
Global drought hotspots report catalogs severe suffering, economic damage
by United Nations press release…Food, water, energy crises, human tragedies in 2023-2025 detailed in sweeping analysis by U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center...
Jul
09
2025
Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report
by Fiona Harvey in The Guardian…Water shortages hitting crops, energy and health as crisis gathers pace amid climate breakdown
Jul
08
2025
Thinking long-term about infrastructure
by School of International Futures…75 years is a long enough period of time for the world to change in ways that are unanticipated. For this reason, scenarios...
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...