Academic Journal Article

Understanding Polycrisis: Definitions, Applications, and Responses

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 […]

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The Polycrisis

Ville Lähde explores various considerations involved in the coining of new terms and concepts, such as polycrisis. He highlights in particular the difference between those who speak of the polycrisis as a totalizing description of the present era and its existential problems, and those who speak of a polycrisis “as a technical concept with which

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The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ is Inevitable

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

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Polycrisis or Crises of Capitalist Social Reproduction

Kanishka Jayasuriya argues that polycrisis is a helpful descriptive term for the novel, intersecting crises of the 21st century, but it should be understood as a political crisis arising from the contradiction between capital accumulation and the social reproduction (the conditions of life) on which capitalism depends. Established political frameworks are unable to manage the

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Navigating Polycrisis: Long-Run Socio-Cultural Factors Shape Response to Changing Climate

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

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Global Warming Overshoots Increase Risks of Climate Tipping Cascades in a Network Model

The research examines the risk of climate tipping under various temperature overshoot scenarios using a simplified network model. It shows that temporary overshoots can increase the tipping risks up to 72% compared with non-overshoot scenarios. It suggests that to avoid high-end climate risks, low-temperature overshoots and stabilization of long-term temperatures at or below current levels

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Why the impacts of climate change may make us less likely to reduce emissions

While increased climate warming may motivate ambitious actions that remediate the climate crisis, Millward-Hopkins proposes that it may have the opposite effect. He argues that the indirect impacts of warming, such as widening socioeconomic inequalities, increased migration, and heightened risk of conflict, interact with key drivers of authoritarian populism in ways that may foster resistance

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