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AI Summary:
The term "polycrisis" has gained significant traction in recent years to describe the interconnected global challenges we face:
The exponential growth of the term polycrisis.
Image source: Polycrisis word bubble
Source: WTO chief warns that we are in a global #polycrisis.
Source: “America and the world are living through what Adam Tooze, the internet’s foremost historian of money and disaster, describes as a ‘polycrisis.’”
Source: Nice retrospective from one of the best sources of media online: “This year Post Carbon Institute turns 20, so it’s a good time to take stock. What have we done, what’s left to do? Our strong suit has been research and communication. And, given that focus, there are some things to be proud of. With a small but consistent budget and dedicated staff, we produced a slew of products—including dozens of reports, roughly 20 books, some clever award-winning videos, three podcasts, a self-directed video course, and a few highly engaging websites. We’ve delivered hundreds of lectures on six continents, and hundreds more interviews for TV, radio, documentary films, and podcasts. Our articles have appeared in scores of publications, from Nature to The Wall Street Journal. What’s significant is that all these communications reinforced a systems view of the human predicament in the 21st century. Rather than focusing on one issue, such as climate change, we sought to show why many existential threats (resource depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution, economic inequality, financial precarity, climate change, and more) are converging. These problems, as well as a heap of temporary benefits (immense wealth for the few, easy mobility, cheap food, a burgeoning urban middle class, and a dizzying array of consumer goods), have issued from a single historically recent development—exploitation of fossil fuels… Our goal has been to broaden the public’s understanding of an emerging mega-event that various groups of researchers are calling the Metacrisis, the Polycrisis, the Great Simplification, or the Great Unraveling… We’ve reached well over 10 million readers and viewers in the past two decades… In the months ahead, PCI will be reflecting this momentous development in a shift in our communications. The time for warnings is running out; increasingly we need responses. Stay tuned.”
Source: Navigating the Polycrisis: From Understanding to Action
Source: “Our Omega Resilience Awards Action Research Grants support organizations working to map the emerging field of polycrisis study, identify points of intervention, and curate the knowledge necessary to equip future leaders to meet the challenges of the global polycrisis. Click on the links below to learn more about the current recipients and their projects.”
Source: “Another sign of the deepening polycrisis is the increase in competing memes, frames, and narratives to describe it. Decades ago, the polycrisis was described more sedately as ‘the human dilemma,’ ‘the global problematique,’ or, thanks to Dana Meadows, ‘limits to growth.’ Today, popular terms are more urgent. They include ‘the great turning,’ ‘the great simplification,’ ‘the great unraveling,’ ‘the metacrisis,’ ‘the permacrisis,’ the prospect of ‘civilizational collapse,’ and, on the internet, ‘TEOTWAWKI—the end of the world as we know it.’ The terms we use most often, the global polycrisis or, for short, the polycrisis, are useful in some circles but far less useful in others. ‘Polycrisis’ is deliberately neutral. It does not tell a story in the same way that ‘navigating the great unraveling does,’ or ‘the extinction rebellion’ or ‘the great simplification.’ These other terms are poetic. Polycrisis is prose. Worse, it is also not a beautiful word. Great words or phrases should be self-explanatory, memorable, and beautiful. It doesn’t immediately convey to people what it means. Yet it is useful in certain contexts where the poetic story-telling terms are not welcome and neutral terms open minds and doors to discussion… The term polycrisis first emerged in the European Union. It was focused on the challenges the EU faced, not on the global polycrisis. Then President Biden in his inaugural address described the ‘cascading crises’ the United States faces. The National Intelligence Council used his term ‘cascading crises’ to describe America’s greatest threat in its four-year threat projection. Wide public awareness of the polycrisis has increasingly emerged in multiple sectors. Advertisements on National Public Radio tell listeners of management services that will enable you to ‘pivot to whatever comes next.’ Perhaps the most common public meme is that we face ‘a rapidly changing world’…”
Source: 22 clips taken from 2023’s Great Simplification podcasts.
Source: Nate Hagens shares his analysis of future trends, including intensifying climate change, geopolitical conflict, polarization, acceleration of AI, and growing financial risks caused by inflation, debt, and energy constraints.
Source: A good 30-minute synthesis of Nate Hagens’ views, which are among the most accurate in grasping the polycrisis. Here is a more official and extended version of the same presentation.
Source: "The cascading and connected crises we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2023 demand a new descriptor to define the scale of the problems the world is facing... The collective vocabularies stored in the world’s great dictionaries didn’t appear to hold a single world to sum up all this strife. So here’s a new one: Polycrisis. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 uses the term, to explain how, 'present and future risks can also interact with each other to form a ‘polycrisis’ – a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part'... Speaking at the launch of this year’s Global Risks Report, Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director at the World Economic Forum, said the risks we face will evolve slowly over the coming decade. 'Two years out, the experts are still expecting that the cost of living is going to be the number one risk on the global agenda. Ten years out, six of the top ten global risks are dominated by climate and the environmental risks associated with that, such as large-scale involuntary migration'... A majority of respondents to the GRPS saw little hope of a quick solution to the many crises the world is facing. When asked to characterize what they expected to see 10 years from now, 20% said 'progressive tipping points and persistent crises would lead to catastrophic outcomes.'”
Source: “Ukraine war, nuclear risk, climate change, Covid intersect to create unprecedented ‘polycrisis’. Global catastrophic risks have intensified at an unprecedented rate in 2022, intersecting and reinforcing each other with far-reaching consequences. The annual report, with the 2022-edition titled: A Year of Colliding Consequences, is the foundation’s review of major global risks that threaten at least ten per cent of humanity. This year’s report flags complex convergence of global threats. This report is released in the wake of the failure of the COP27 climate talks to agree strong measures to curb fossil fuel production, and as the ripple effects of the Ukraine war continue to be felt worldwide in terms of heightened nuclear risk, severe food and energy insecurity, surging inflation and poverty. The Global Challenges Foundation calls on the international community to urgently push forward new initiatives to understand and manage this complex convergence of global risks.“
Source: "The Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022 is 'permacrisis'... However, digging into the philosophical roots of the word reveals that a crisis is not necessarily awful, but may, in the long term, prove a necessary and beneficial corrective. Philosophers have long defined a crisis as a situation that forces an individual or group to a moment of thoughtful critique – to a point where a new path is mapped out in relation to some issue of pressing concern. This definition stems from the ancient Greek term κρίσις or krisis, which describes a medical or political moment of opportunity that bifurcates into life or death, victory or defeat. However, as philosopher of history Reinhart Koselleck has shown, in modern philosophy, that ancient Greek notion of crisis undergoes a semantic shift. Its meaning changes radically, to refer to a contradiction between opposing forces that accelerates the transition of past into future. This can be seen in Karl Marx’s description of capitalism as a crisis-ridden economic system. In struggling to tame its forces of production, labour and machinery, Marx contends, this system causes crises of overproduction: an excess of supply that cannot be met with an equivalent demand. These crises in turn foster opportunities for cultural, social and political innovation, the best 20th-century example of which is the creation of the welfare state. 'Crisis' is similarly defined in American philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s approach to the history of science. Kuhn views progress in modern research as driven by crises within existing scientific paradigms. The progressive shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian paradigms in 20th-century physics most neatly illustrates his thinking. In both cases, 'crisis' is linked to the idea – the ideal, even – of progress. Marx believed that, because the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, capitalism would meet a final crisis and that this would lead to the emergence of communism: an entirely new and, crucially, better socio-political situation. 'Permacrisis' represents the contemporary inversion of this conception. It is similar to Marx’s idea that human history will lead to a final crisis, only it precludes any idea of further progress. Instead of leading to something better, it denotes a static and permanently difficult situation... Permacrisis signals not only a loss of faith in progress, but also a new realism in relation to what people can cope with and achieve. Our crises have become so complex and deep-seated that they can transcend our capacity to understand them. Any decision to tackle them risks only making things worse. We are thus faced with a troubling conclusion. Our crises are no longer a problem. They are a stubborn fact.”
Source: “Normal is Over 1.1 is an award-winning documentary about humanity's wisest response to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, income inequality and the link between these issues… Featuring among others: Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Environmental activist, author. Prof. Michael Mann, Meteorologist. Prof. Naomi Oreskes, History of Science. Charles Eisenstein, Author, Speaker. Prof. Lester Brown, Agricultural Economist. Paul Gilding, Social Activist. Al Gore, former vice president USA, Prof. Bernard Lietaer, International Finance and many more ‘keystone individuals.’”
Source: "EMS and it’s ethnic media partners explore the emerging concept of the 'polycrisis,' the complex and overlapping set of global challenges, from social and political turmoil to rising economic uncertainty and inequality, all compounded by the reality of climate change and a warming planet.”
Source: Global Macro Update. TLDR: Global pandemic <> supply chain issues <> economic contraction <> money printing <> inflation <> Ukraine war <> oil price shock <> food crisis <> interest rate hikes <> stock market crash <> recession <> rising unemployment <> debt crisis <> financial contagion.
"20% of the world's population consumes 80% of its resources. The world spends 12 times more on military expenditures than on aid to developing countries. 5,000 people a day die because of dirty drinking water. 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Nearly 1 billion people are going hungry. Over 50% of grain traded around the world is used for animal feed or biofuels. 40% of arable land has suffered long-term damage. Every year, 13 millions hectares of forest disappear. One mammal in 4, one bird in 8, one amphibian in 3 are threatened with extinction. Species are dying out at a rhythm 1,000 times faster than the natural rate. Three quarters of fishing grounds are exhausted, depleted or in dangerous decline. The average temperature of the last 15 years have been the highest ever recorded. The ice cap is 40% thinner than 40 years ago. [And] There may be at least 200 million climate refugees by 2050." (1)
(1) Home. DVD. Directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Elzévir Films, Europa Corp., and France 2, 2009.
