by Jonathan Taplin in Vanity Fair…..In an excerpt from his new book, The End of Reality, the author warns about the curses of AI and transhumanism, presenting the moral case against superintelligence.
Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction
by Gaya Herrington in The Guardian…A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization – and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news
Trevor Hancock: A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts
by Trevor Hancock in Times Colonist…..Today’s crises, they wrote, “simultaneously span natural, political, economic and technological systems, because they’re driven by a multiplicity of underlying ‘systemic risks.’ ”
How to resist cultic thinking in the end times
by Richard Heinberg in Common Dreams……People who are aware of society’s blind spots are often attracted to would-be cult leaders, because the former need a new worldview to replace the flawed one they are reacting against, and the latter fill that need.
Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert
by Fiona Harvey in The Guardian….“Climate change is a pandemic that we need to fight quickly. See how fast the degradation of the climate is going – I think it’s going even faster than we predicted.”
Atlantic collapse: Q&A with scientists behind controversial study predicting a colder Europe
by Peter Ditlevsen in The Conversation…..But what we see now with more and more frequent extremes, heat waves and storms and floodings, is the possibility of actually hitting a nonlinearity, a tipping point. That’s a much more challenging phenomenon to model.
From debt to diversity: A journey of rewilding, carbon capture and hope
by Elizabeth Fitt in Mongabay….A study also shows that the rewilded farmland at Knepp absorbs more carbon dioxide than conventional farms, providing hope for climate change mitigation and soil restoration.
Trevor Hancock: A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts
by Trevor Hancock in the Times Colonist…The polycrisis, according to the UN and Cascade Institute, includes the climate crisis, war, extreme economic inequality, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations and an escalating danger of nuclear war,
Instead of moving to escape climate chaos, build social trust where you are
by Bill McKibben in Common Dreams….And I think it’s on a lot of minds, especially right now, as it becomes clear that many parts of our Earth won’t be habitable going forward.
How to deal with a world of polycrisis?
by Steffan Heuer in Think:Act Magazine….While the term is not new, polycrisis has taken on a new meaning and new urgency as governments, think tanks and ordinary citizens try to get their heads around how to best respond and prepare for it.
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...