Adam Tooze frequently discusses various aspects of the polycrisis in his blog posts. Notable entries include: “Defining polycrisis – from crisis pictures to the crisis matrix” (24 June 2022) “Calibrating the polycrisis – with the help of the International Bank of Settlements” (26 June 2022) “Polycrisis – Thinking on the Tightrope” (29 October 2022) “Haiti […]
Ian Bremmer argues that the world faces three major crises—pandemics, climate change, and disruptive technologies (AI, lethal autonomous weapons, cyberwarfare, and biotechnology)—but our ability to respond effectively is hampered by broken American politics and the worsening rivalry between the United States and China. The three crises, however, present an opportunity and the necessary impetus for
The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – And Our Response – Will Change the World Read More »
Camille Carlton and Maria Bridge argue that technology can amplify the metacrisis in two ways: by creating a centralized dystopia in which governments use technology to control citizens, or by creating decentralized chaos and catastrophe in which individuals wield immense technological powers in a free-for-all.
A Deeper Dive into the Meta Crisis Read More »
Richard Heinberg examines humanity’s unprecedented power over the planet, exploring the consequences of its overuse, which he argues has led to ecological and social crises. He questions how humanity’s dominance has brought the planet to the verge of disaster and whether we can change our relationship with power to avert catastrophe.
Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival Read More »
Niall Ferguson proposes that “Superficially… [it’s] no more than a very nasty coincidence that the latest wave of the pandemic should happen at the same time as so many extreme weather events and a wave of social and political unrest. On closer inspection, however, we can see that these are connections between these disasters –
The World’s Cascade of Disasters is Not a Coincidence Read More »
Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens confront the possibility of civilizational collapse within our lifetimes, examining scientific evidence of growing systemic crises. They connect abstract scientific findings to everyday experiences, linking the Anthropocene to our daily lives.
How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times Read More »
This longitudinal case study applies collapse theory to the Piura Basin of Peru, a region subject to extreme El Niño weather events, that has previously seen societal collapse in the ancient Moche civilization. By examining factors from the Robustness Framework such as centralized governance, system interconnectedness, and central elites, the researchers examined the interactions of
Integrating Collapse Theories to Understand Socio-Ecological Systems Resilience Read More »
Melanie Hart, Jordan Link, and Ngor Luong of the Center for American Progress translate and discuss Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Secretary-General Chen Yixin’s effort to explain President Xi Jinping’s “ten fundamental insights” on “preventing and resolving major risks”. Yixin considers black swan events and risk interactions, noting that “All categories of risk
Taking Strategic Initiative to Prevent and Defuse Major Risks Read More »
The authors argue we are increasingly witnessing a new form global crises they characterize as “synchronous failure.” This form of crisis “is more biophysical in origin, more inter-systemic in manifestation, more global in scope, and more rapid in development” (5). The deep cause of synchronous failure are increases in energy throughput, heightened global connectivity, and
Synchronous Failure: The Emerging Causal Architecture of Global Crisis Read More »
The authors survey the development of the adaptive governance concept, which they define as “A range of interactions between actors, networks, organizations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems” (p. 6). Flexible, polycentric networks of diverse stakeholders can better address the uncertainty and complexity of change in social-ecological systems than
A Decade of Adaptive Governance Scholarship: Synthesis and Future Directions Read More »
