Category Archives: Polycrisis

Google AI: A polycrisis is a single situation where multiple, distinct global crises occur simultaneously and interact in ways that amplify each other, making the overall damage significantly worse than the sum of its individual parts. Instead of dealing with isolated, sequential emergencies, a polycrisis features intersecting networks of stress across economic, geopolitical, ecological, and technological systems.
Core Characteristics
Causal Entanglement: A crisis in one system (e.g., a geopolitical conflict) directly triggers or worsens a crisis in another system (e.g., energy prices and global food supply chains).
Feedback Loops: The compounding effects bounce back and forth between systems, creating highly volatile and unpredictable domino effects.
Systemic Overwhelm: Because the crises are deeply linked, they cannot be successfully resolved one at a time, frequently paralyzing traditional governance and risk-management strategies

Uranium waste from 50+ sites contaminating groundwater

Posted on June 12, 2023 by

Preface. One of the top priorities of collapse from energy decline is to clean up nuclear (Superfund and other hazardous) wastes NOW, while we have the energy and technical ability to do so. Future generations will be thrown back into … Continue reading →

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Military Threats: Peak oil, population, climate change, pandemics, economic crises, cyberattacks, failed states, nuclear war

Posted on May 15, 2023 by

Mackintosh C (2010) Peak Oil “The debate is over”. Permaculture research institute. https://www.permaculturenews.org/2010/11/10/peak-oil-the-debate-is-over/ Preface. The military is more realistic about the challenges the world faces than congress or other branches and government agencies. In 2010, all of the military branches … Continue reading →

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Skyscrapers: A bad idea as energy declines

Posted on May 8, 2023 by

Preface. One reason Paris is such a lovely city is that it was built to human scale, with buildings of five stories or less, because that was about as high as people were willing to climb, so not surprisingly, rents … Continue reading →

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Book review of Turchin’s “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”

Posted on May 1, 2023 by

Preface. This is a book review of both “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”.  I recommend reading “War & Peace & War” first, then the more difficult “Secular Cycles”. Turchin has found patterns in the rise and fall … Continue reading →

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Joseph Romm: we’re stealing from the next 100 billion people to walk the earth

Posted on April 17, 2023 by

Source: Lu (2021) Visualized: The Biggest Ponzi Schemes in Modern History. Visual Capitalist Preface. Joseph Romm writes that the exponential growth Ponzi Scheme is consuming the resources of the next 100 billion people. Our children and grandchildren.  Romm’s post was … Continue reading →

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California Governor Newsom goes furthest to soften collapse of any U.S. state

Posted on March 19, 2023 by

Preface. In September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom passed 12 bills making abortion easier to obtain, and invites women from states where abortion is forbidden to come here.

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Collapse of Mayan civilization: drought, mercury poisoning, toxic algae

Posted on March 12, 2023 by

Preface. Drought is probably reason #1, but collapse is complex, I’ve seen lists of over 200 reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire, and our own fall will have even more causes, though triggered by energy decline, since for … Continue reading →

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Deforestation in the news

Posted on March 5, 2023 by

Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies.  I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy … Continue reading →

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Human sprawl and wildlife destruction: a book review of “Nature Wars”

Posted on February 13, 2023 by

Preface.  This is a book review of Sterba’s “Nature Wars” and our interaction with wildlife as our insanely huge population growth wipes out nature.

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China is destroying itself

Posted on December 26, 2022 by

Preface. China has been destroying itself for many decades now.  In Mao’s “great leap forward” about 35 to 50 million are estimated to have died from starvation from 1958 on, as you’ll read in my book review of” Shapiro J … Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity, Hazardous Waste, Mining, Soil | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment