Life in the Global Polycrisis
The Long View
"What we do: Hope & heartbreak & all points of view."
Omega
Pandemics
A ‘second tree of life’ could wreak havoc, scientists warn
by Carl Zimmer in The New York Times…Research on so-called mirror cells, which defy fundamental properties of living organisms, should be prohibited as too dangerous, biologists said.
‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research
by Ian Sample in The Guardian…Experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could put humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections
Malaria Is Surging in Ethiopia, Reversing a Decade of Progress Against the Disease
by Maya Misikir and Stephanie Nolen in The New York Times…Climate change, civil conflict and growing resistance to insecticides and treatments are all contributing to an alarming spread of cases.
Polycrisis
How facing grief can help us navigate a world in crisis
Interview by Nate Hagen….How has an absence of ritual and the avoidance of grief in our culture distorted our relationship to loss – and therefore our ability to protect what we love? What practices do other cultures use to nurture ecological identity and kinship with the more-than-human world? And finally, why might grief, when honored and integrated, be a vital part of building more resilient and ecologically-grounded systems for the future?
Counter-hegemony and polycrisis I: how to eat and how to think
by Raj Patel in The Journal of Peasant Studies…Through examining twentieth-century counter-hegemonic movements, particularly the Italian mondine and the Black Panther Party, this paper advances a theoretical understanding of how counter-hegemony emerges through experimental renegotiations of world-ecological relations. This analysis demonstrates how movements dialectically integrate material practice with intellectual formation, producing new social relations within the interstices of hegemonic power. The mondine struggles against mosquitos and exploitative labour conditions, like the Panthers’ hidden gardens and breakfast programmes, illustrate a crucial theoretical insight: counter-hegemony operates not merely as critique but as practical experimentation with the very boundaries between social and ecological reproduction.
BRICS in 2025
by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie in Phenomenal World…There are now two competing global models of energy and influence: one based on fossil fuels, one on green technologies and a new model of sustainable development. China’s technology is finding new markets around the world because lots of people want it. But there is so far no real wraparound support of finance, trade, and tech transfer—as no new international order of sustainable governance has yet been built. The critical question of the future of BRICS lies with its member countries’ willingness and ability to effect broader collaboration in the fields of technology, trade, and finance. A quarter of the way to the twenty-second century, everything is up for grabs.
Resilience
Dimensions of the Great Turning
from The Work That Reconnects Network,,,In the Work That Reconnects we uplift and celebrate the story of the Great Turning, the essential shift to a way of living and political economy that serves and sustains life.
Rethinking resilience
by Alene Dawson in John Templeton Foundation News…”One way to think about resilience is the ability to recover from or successfully manage obstacles, challenges, adversity – in some case trauma,” says professor Eranda Jayawickreme, a psychologist at Wake Forest University. “Being resilient doesn’t always mean bouncing back quickly. It can also mean recovering gradually.”
Planetary salutogenesis: reimagining health in the age of the anthropocene
by Nils Gilman in Small Precautions…In sum, Planetary Salutogenesis argues that the future of health cannot be carved from the body alone. It must be cultivated in the soil, seeded in the air, woven into ecosystems and institutions alike. It is not merely about surviving a sickened world — it is about becoming well together, or not at all. Our final line is unequivocal: “The future of health will be planetary, or there will be no future health at all.”
Environment
Donella meadows revisited
by Donella Meadows with Calvin Po in Future Observatory Journal… In this previously unpublished text, the renowned systems thinker sets out a vision for bioregional learning centres. Four decades on, we provide a critical annotation from today’s perspective
Texan stoicism provides comfort, and excuses, after the flood
by J. David Goodman in The New York Times…Texans often draw on the idea of their own self-reliance during times of adversity. Gov. Greg Abbott has used it to deflect tough questions.
Disaster 101: Your guide to extreme weather preparation, relief, and recovery
by Lyndsey Gilpin in Grist…No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area and change your life. Whether it’s a hurricane, winter storm, flash flood, tornado, wildfire, or heat wave, disasters can damage or destroy your home and property, cause lengthy power outages, and stall civic services. Grist created a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after these traumatic and chaotic events, as well as where to find and build support in your community.
ECONOMY
The world economy is on the brink of epochal change
by Mark Blyth in The Atlantic…Capitalism’s operating system is due for a major upgrade. How that turns out depends on enormously consequential political choices.
The world economy is on the brink of epochal change
by Mark Blythe in The Atlantic…Capitalism’s operating system is due for a major upgrade. How that turns out depends on enormously consequential political choices.
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 calamity into capital.
Politics
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 offloaded onto them, while the beneficiaries of the modern system — the “elites” — remain largely untouched. Consider the climate change debate: for many in the MAGA base, the imposition of green policies is perceived as a direct attack on their livelihoods, a demand by scientific and intellectual elites that they make personal sacrifices for a problem they feel they did not create (and which may not even exist, according to many of them) and which are not a burden for those advocating for the changes.
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 world, wagers against the future and instead “banks on the bunker”, either in the form of personal survival (an option for the billionaire elite), planetary exit strategies, or fortress nationalisms.
If you want peace, prepare for war—an ancient lesson Canada must remember
by Thomas Homer-Dixon at The Cascade Institute…If you want peace, prepare for war. This ancient Roman aphorism is starkly relevant to Canada’s situation today, no matter how contrary it seems to our national culture.
People
The bioregional vision of Donella Meadows
by Isabel Carlisle in Bioregional Learning Center… ‘Helping people and cultures all over the world develop and express their own capacity to solve their own problems, consistent with their own needs and with the ecosystems around them. And doing that through enhancing the power within all cultures and peoples to combine intellectual knowing and intuitive knowing, reasoning about the earth and living in consonance with it.’ This became the project that the Balaton Group of practitioners (mainly scientists and systems thinkers) was formed around.
The transformative power of intersectionality
by Rana Zincir Celal…..The concept of intersectionality recognizes the multidimensionality of inequality and the interconnection of different forms
of discrimination. It analyzes the role, function and impact of
power structures on discrimination and privilege. An intersectional perspective can be used to draw attention to existing
systems of oppression in society and to challenge, break
through and change them. Intersectionality thus holds the
potential for promoting social justice, solidarity and fairness.
Love in the time of the polycrisis: 21new signs of emergence
by Susan Grelock Yusem in Commonweal.org…..As we live through extremes, like social turmoil, extreme weather, pandemic, and economic instability, we also hold complex emotional experiences: hope and despondency, courage and fear, joy and grief.
Community
Future Signals – what we’re watching for in 2025
From Nesta…Our annual series about the trends and developments that are set to shape the coming year
Zero-problem philanthropy
by Christian Seelos in SSIR…Moving away from endless problem-solving and toward creating healthy context.
The Earth Does Not Speak in Prose, A conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
Interviewed by Charlotte Du Cann, Paul Kingsnorth, writer and Dark Mountain co-founder….writes about forging a language that can speak with and for the more-than-human world.
Culture
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 security and companionship. She demonstrates how small acts of kindness and acceptance can have a ripple effect.
Philanthropy by the numbers
by Aaron Horvath in The Hedgehog Review…If the question is how to do more good with your giving, then the answer MyGoodness provides comes with crisply quantified moral clarity.
Octavia Butler on creativity, the power of our obsessions, and how we become who we are
by Maria Popova in The Pocket…“Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful positive obsession blunts pain, diverts rage, and engages each of us in the greatest, the most intense of our chosen struggles.”
Worldviews
Why is ChatGPT telling people to email me?
by Kashmir Hill in The New York Times…reporter who writes about A.I. finds her work is catching on — with the Chatbot she often writes about.
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 people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.
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 the technology goes, it could.
Bookshelf
Grow that stack by your bedside — check out this selection of some of the most compelling work we’re reading.
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