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Sky-High Oil Prices. A Fertilizer Shortage. Now Add a “Super El Niño.”

This article argues that the war involving Iran, particularly through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has driven up oil and fertilizer prices, triggering supply shortages that threaten global agricultural production just as climate pressures intensify. The anticipated arrival of a strong or “super” El Niño is expected to further disrupt weather patterns, compounding […]

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Digital Resilience Within a Hypermediated Polycrisis

This article explores digital resilience within a hypermediated polycrisis, arguing that overlapping crises are increasingly experienced through deeply interconnected digital environments that shape how people understand and respond to disruption. It highlights digital resilience as a dynamic, socially embedded process involving digital literacy, social networks, and adaptive capacities across multiple levels, and notes that marginalized

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Beyond Survival: Sustaining Human Agency in Challenging Times – Graham Leicester

In this podcast, Katherine Fulton, Graham Leicester, and Commonweal’s executive director Oren Slozberg explore how individuals, communities, and institutions can cultivate a fully human response to the polycrisis. The conversation reflects on why framing the polycrisis in abstract or intellectual terms tends to produce resignation rather than agency, and argues instead for approaching it as

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Beyond Climate: Sketching the Anatomy of our Polycrisis and Reflecting on Solutions

This article argues that climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequity form an interconnected polycrisis driven by shared underlying causes and mutually reinforcing dynamics. It shows how environmental degradation and social inequity interact across systems, with high-income populations contributing disproportionately to these crises while experiencing fewer of their impacts. The article emphasizes that addressing this

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Collective Memory and Genetic Social Psychology: A Necessary Rediscovery in Times of Polycrisis

The author argues that prevailing approaches to collective memory are too descriptive to address the developmental dynamics shaping memory in a polycrisis era marked by authoritarian resurgence and democratic fragility. He advances Genetic Social Psychology as an interdisciplinary framework that explains how collective memory, understood as social representations, is transformed through relations of domination, submission,

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Reflections by Thomas Homer-Dixon

In this interview, Dr.Thomas Homer-Dixon reflects on his intellectual journey from studying political science and human conflict to developing a broader framework for understanding interconnected global crises. He explains the concept of polycrisis as the synchronization of multiple, linked crises rather than a coincidence of separate shocks, suggesting that today’s converging disruptions may reflect deeper

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Uncomfortable Questions in Unstable Times

In this episode, Nate Hagens introduces a new recurring segment, Uncomfortable Questions in Unstable Times, focused on examining foundational assumptions about growth, stability, and societal purpose. He explores what might change if societies shifted their primary objective from economic growth to systemic stability, and considers how such a reorientation could reshape political incentives, cultural norms,

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Flattening the Curve on Societal Crisis: Lessons from History

The authors argue that today’s polycrisis, marked by climate change, inequality, and institutional fragility, echoes recurrent structural challenges seen throughout history. While most historical crises led to violence and collapse, a small number were successfully averted through transformative reforms. Drawing on these rare cases, the authors outline three critical policy lessons: reverse rising inequality to

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America’s Polycrisis Has Arrived

The author argues that the United States is experiencing a polycrisis, a convergence of simultaneous, mutually reinforcing crises spanning foreign policy, the rule of law, civil rights, constitutional governance, the environment, healthcare, the military, and the economy. The author maintains that this multi-crisis dynamic leaves the U.S. vulnerable to extreme hardship and governmental collapse, and

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