In the Cascading Risks Study, author Trond Undheim seeks to create five scenarios (Climate cataclysm by 2075; World war by 2075; Growth and collapse by 2075; Runaway AI by 2075; and Synthetic biology released in the wild by 2075 ) with which to spur deeper conversation about the existential risks to humanity and how they […]
Scenarios 2075: The Cascading Risks Study Read More »
Roman Krznaric explores the conditions in which crises lead to transformative societal change. He finds that transformative responses are most common in conditions of war, disaster, revolution, and disruption. The latter refers to “a moment of system instability that provides opportunities for rapid transformation” which is created by the “disruption nexus” of crisis events (typically
The Disruption Nexus Read More »
Global Tipping Points is a report, led by the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, that identifies negative and positive tipping points with regards to ongoing global crises. According to the report, the existence of negative tipping points shows that the threats posed by the current crises we
Global Tipping Points Report 2023 Read More »
The authors argue that the current body of research into societal crises—defined here as “periods of turmoil and destabilization in socio-cultural, political, economic, and other systems, often accompanied by varying amounts of violence and sometimes significant changes in social structure”—concentrates on a narrow selection of historical examples. Addressing this, the authors compile a database of
This paper compares conceptualizations of the term “polycrisis,” raising questions about the key aspects of different definitions while stressing a convergence in critical features. It conceives a polycrisis as a state in which multiple, macroregional, ecologically embedded, and inexorably interconnected systems face high – and advancing – risk across socioeconomic, political, and other dimensions. After
Understanding Polycrisis: Definitions, Applications, and Responses Read More »
This edited volume argues that humanity has entered a fundamentally novel era of existential risk. These risks range from global-scale natural disasters (like volcanic super-eruptions) to anthropogenic environmental destabilization (like climate change and loss of biosphere integrity), and from calamities that spread rapidly around our highly networked planet (like viruses and cyber threats) to the
The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies Read More »
Using an evolutionary ecology perspective, William E. Rees argues that modern techno-industrial society is in a state of advanced ecological overshoot. Fossil fuels have enabled a massive expansion of humanity that constitutes the most globally significant ecological phenomena in 250 000 years of human evolutionary history. He concludes that humanity is exhibiting the dynamic of
The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ is Inevitable Read More »
Zack Walsh argues that the current level of globalization, number of systemic risks, and continued depletion of the Earth’s resources will generate some sort of societal collapse. He details these systemic risks, defines polycrisis and existential risk, and discusses the distressing impacts of climate change on our global trajectory. “Current forecasts suggest that unless we
Societies throughout history have faced polycrises, but the outcomes range widely from collapse to positive adaptation. The authors have developed a Crisis Database of 150 past societal crises and find that three pressures make societies especially vulnerable to environmental stresses (and consequent polycrises) by impeding collective action: popular immiseration, elite overproduction and conflict, and state
In this blog, Richard Hames discusses polycrisis, societal collapse, existential risk, and related themes. Notable entries include: · “Existential Risk and The Method of Collapsology” (23 June 2022) · “The decisive moment” (01 July 2022) · “On Staying Woke in Polycrisis Futurism” (06 July 2022) · “Attention Deficit Hyperobject Disorder” (18 July 2022) · “The Stakes of Sri Lanka”
