The Polycrisis Resource Library is a growing collection of media that help to understand polycrisis, develop strategies to address polycrisis, and build a field of polycrisis analysis.
Building on an earlier post, Bo Harvey begins with the question “what might the popularity of [the term] polycrisis say about the weaknesses of current critical analyses of capitalism?” and…
Tim Palmer discusses the challenges of predicting events in nonlinear systems that, by nature, experience intermittent instabilities, as in the famous “butterfly effect”. Today, continued emissions are increasing the instabilities…
Asher Miller of the Post-Carbon Institute critiques Dan Drezner’s dismissal of the term polycrisis and his worry that it promotes fatalism and inaction. Miller counterargues that “only in understanding the…
This market research report surveys public opinion on many current topics including technology, climate change, globalization, inequality, political splintering, and more. It frames its findings in the context of the…
Adam Tooze argues that there are three ways to reconcile “the feverish talk of deglobalisation and decoupling” with statistics that “show an inertial continuity in trade and investment patterns: business…
The authors argue that the most effective way to build general resilience in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world is to foster “response diversity… a system’s variety of responses to…
Noting that polycrisis was the key buzzword at the World Economic Forum’s January 2023 meeting in Davos, Daniel Drezner attempts to make sense of the concept as “the concatenation of…
Farwa Sial argues that the polycrisis neologism is a feint that allows international financial institutions to continue business as usual by obscuring their role in global problems. She critiques definitions…
Bo Harvey examines origins and recent popularity of the polycrisis concept, then rebuts critiques of the concept by Noah Smith and Guney Isikara. In response to the latter, Harvey problematizes…
The Polycrisis Resource Library includes resources that:
Though not exhaustive, the Library strives to present a diverse representation of views on different aspects of the polycrisis discussion, and will be updated as that discussion evolves. Search for resources with the keyword search bar, or by using the drop-down menus to filter for type of resource, global systems addressed, and key themes.
Dismissing the Term ‘Polycrisis’ has One Inevitable Consequence – Reality Always Bites
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Lawrence, and Scott Janzwood
The authors respond to criticism of the use of the word “polycrisis”, arguing that the world’s current crises are in many ways unprecedented and thus merit a new word and…