Newsletter Archives - Polycrisis

The Slow Forces Behind this Year’s Fast Crises

This article argues that what looks like sudden disruption is actually the visible crest of decades-long, slow-moving structural shifts. Drawing on complexity science, it explains how small, often barely perceptible stresses accumulate along a “long tail” before accelerating into exponential change and tipping points, whether in climate systems, public health, or politics. Rather than reacting […]

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It is Now 85 Seconds to Midnight

This statement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, signaling an intensifying risk of global catastrophe. It highlights the convergence of escalating threats, including nuclear conflict, climate change, biotechnology risks, and unregulated artificial intelligence, all compounded by rising nationalism, autocracy,

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Immigration, War, Economic Collapse: Will the Global Order Change in 2026?

This article presents Fair Observers’s 2026 geopolitical outlook using a Social, Political, Economic, Religious, and Military framework. The authors argue that overlapping global stresses, immigration pressures, democratic dysfunction, economic fragility, and strategic rivalry, are accelerating institutional erosion. The analysis outlines key global risk dynamics, including the rise of far-right movements in Europe, increasing state fragility,

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Systemic Risk And Escalation Dynamics In Global Politics (2026–2027)

This article examines the systemic risks and escalation dynamics shaping global politics in 2026–2027, highlighting how interconnected crises in Venezuela, the Middle East, Ukraine, and Taiwan are contributing to a globally coupled system prone to cascading instability. It argues that the erosion of international norms, intensifying domestic pressures, and overlapping regional conflicts are lowering the

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Welcome to the Age of Chaos

In this analysis, Foreign Policy presents its annual foresight of the top global risks for 2026. Drawing on the authors’ forecasting experience at the National Intelligence Council, the report outlines ten interconnected threats, including economic crisis, the dissolution of global order, disruptive AI trajectories, and accelerating climate decline. The authors argue that the world is

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A polycrisis has shattered our world this year. But with care, we can put it back together

The author reflects on 2025 as the year plagued by social, economic, environmental, technological and institutional challenges, a period of polycrisis that created overwhelming pressure and global instability. She describes how democratic norms have declined, inequalities have widened and the liberal international order has splintered, leaving societies emotionally exhausted and increasingly divided into “us v

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2025’s Global Health Polycrisis: Climate, Contagion and the Limits of our Defences

This article explores how 2025 marked a defining year for global public health, shaped by a polycrisis of resurgent infectious diseases, climate-driven emergencies, antimicrobial resistance, and an escalating mental health burden. It details the re-emergence of diseases like measles and mpox, record-breaking dengue outbreaks, and rising drug-resistant infections, alongside the growing toll of extreme heat,

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Navigating Collapse Together: Toward Regenerative Public Life

In this essay, Nicole Negowetti reflects on what becomes possible when collapse is understood not only as crisis but as a collective passage. She contrasts dominant responses, rooted in worldviews that frame life as competitive and uncertainty as dangerous, with perspectives from Indigenous teachings, ecological science, and bodily cycles that reframe collapse as a threshold

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The Global Polytunity

In this article, Yuen Yuen Ang introduces the concept of polytunity as a counter-narrative to the prevailing discourse of polycrisis. Rather than viewing overlapping global disruptions as signs of inevitable collapse, Ang argues they present a rare opportunity for systemic transformation. She critiques the Western-centric framing of global challenges and calls for a new paradigm

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The Steepness of the Slope

The author examines the mathematical and systemic nature of civilizational collapse, tracing how societies both ancient and modern follow what he calls the “Seneca Cliff”: a slow ascent of growth and complexity followed by a rapid, self-reinforcing decline. Drawing on complexity theory, systems dynamics, and historical examples such as the Roman Empire, the Maya, and

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