by Travis Hartman, et al. in Reuters…After Hawaii’s worst wildfire killed scores of people in August, local and federal agencies are reckoning with the toxic chemicals created when a built environment burns
The world’s top industrial countries are in treacherous waters
by Richard Heinberg in Resilience.org…Whatever is coming will be as historically unique as our present circumstances. The ever-louder rumblings from just over the horizon suggest that, whatever it is, it’s not far off.
Drought in Brazil’s Amazon reveals ancient engravings
in Phys.org…”Unhappily it is now reappearing with the worsening of the drought,” Carneiro said. “Having our rivers back (flooded) and keeping the engravings submerged will help preserve them, even more than our work.”
The Nose Is For Eating Too
by Gita Viswanath in On Eating….Defying the doctor’s predictions, mother recovered sufficiently enough to get rid of the NG tube. Alas! She insists she cannot taste anything now!
Why so much is going wrong at the same time
By Thomas Homer-Dixon on The Cascade Institute…Most obviously, given that Earth’s worsening energy imbalance seems to be emerging as the single most powerful driver of crises across multiple ecological, economic, and social systems, humanity needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions to near zero as fast as possible. Realistically, though, we won’t cut them deeply enough soon enough to keep the imbalance from having devastating impacts, not least on the world’s food supply.
Navigating the Polycrisis
By Michael J. Albert…A much-needed work of global futures studies, Navigating the Polycrisis brings the rigor of the natural and social sciences together with speculative imagination in order to illuminate and shape our global future.
Permacrisis
By Gordon Brown, et al in Permacrisis….The longer a problem goes unresolved, the worse it will get; that’s what happens in a permacrisis – and that’s why we must act now.
The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory
by William J Ripple in BioScience…..Rather than focusing only on carbon reduction and climate change, addressing the underlying issue of ecological overshoot will give us our best shot at surviving these challenges in the long run. This is our moment to make a profound difference for all life on Earth, and we must embrace it with unwavering courage and determination to create a legacy of change that will stand the test of time.
For a Coming Extinction
BYÂ W. S. MERWIN Gray whaleNow that we are sending you to The EndThat great godTell himThat we who follow you invented forgivenessAnd forgive nothing I write as though you could understandAnd I could say itOne must always pretend somethingAmong the dyingWhen you have...
Climate extremes call for resilience and adaptation, not just repair
by Jorn Birkmann in Nature…..Through international research and local collaborations, the Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning at the University of Stuttgart is changing the way the world prepares for a future of extremes.
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...
Oct
10
2024
The collapse is coming. Will humanity adapt?
by Peter Watts in The MIT Press…..Now, Homo sapiens of some form or another is going to survive no matter what we do, short of blowing up the planet with nuclear...
Oct
10
2024
Applying resilience thinking
from Stockholm Resilience Centre….Simply enhancing the resilience of the existing ecosystem services can entrench and exacerbate inequalities. Important...
Oct
10
2024
Hurricane Helene isn’t an outlier. It’s a harbinger of the future.
by John Morales in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…And then came the rain. Preliminary storm-total rainfall measured on the ground included nearly 31 inches...
Oct
10
2024
Chartbook 325: Wrestling with transition thinking. Or on being “interregnumed” and how to resist it. (Hegemony notes 8)
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook 325…The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of...
Sep
24
2024
Yuval Noah Harari on the eclipsing of human intelligence
Sean Illing of The Gray Area interviews Yuval Noah Harari…If the internet age has anything like an ideology, it’s that more information and more data and...
Sep
24
2024
How rising global heat connects catastrophic floods on four continents
by Scott Dance in The Washington Post…At this time of year, that flood potential amped up by global warming can become especially evident.
Sep
18
2024
Scaling: The state of play in AI
by Ethan Mollick in One Useful Thing…With continued advancements in model architecture and training techniques, we’re approaching a new frontier in AI...
Sep
18
2024
Facing global risks with honest hope
From (ASRA) Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment report Facing global risks with honest hope….Transforming Multidimensional Challenges into Multidimensional...
Sep
18
2024
Superbugs ‘could kill 39m people by 2050’ amid rising drug resistance
by Kat Lay in The Guardian…Child deaths from infections see ‘remarkable’ decline but AMR fatalities of over-70s likely to rise by 146%, study finds Analysis:...
Sep
16
2024
Global trends are polarizing us: Can democracy handle it?
by Richard Heinberg in resilience.org….Today the world faces historically unique stresses that are likely to be increasingly polarizing for many societies. These...