What’s a polycrisis?
A polycrisis (aka metacrisis) is where we currently find ourselves: a number of overlapping and interdependent crises that converge and amplify each other. There’s the climate emergency of course, but also huge losses in biodiversity, political polarisation, huge levels of financial inequality, pervasive pollution of the biosphere, limits to growth imposed by depleted energy and mineral reserves, fragility of the global financial system… the list goes on.
It’s hard to get one’s head around the complexity of the polycrisis and there is a temptation to just focus on day-to-day concerns without worrying too much about what might be heading our way in the future. The first thing we can do is learn more about the predicament we find ourselves in. Without properly understanding the problems — and their systemic origin — it’s unlikely that we will know where to look for solutions.
This page is not intended to convince you that there is one ‘right’ approach to these issues. Rather, it offers a collection of resources which will help you reflect, discuss and make up your own mind on how we should shape our future. It focusses primarily (but not exclusively) on podcasts and blog posts as the most accessible way of exploring different sources of information and points of view. In general, the podcasts involve a conversation between the host and a guest — these are often eye-opening and give us access to wide range of viewpoints and sources of knowledge.
New resources will be added from time to time.
(Mainly) Podcasts
Below we list a number of podcast channels which regularly provide provocative and thoughtful interviews with experts from a wide variety of fields. Typically the podcasts are also available in video format and are accompanied by “show notes” on the host’s website. For example, the Nate Hagens conversation with Herman Daly on “Toward an Ecological Economics” has
- an audio-only version o various podcast platforms, eg https://open.spotify.com/episode/2koF5tJJOfTOpsKeLwPds3?si=Phkk28p1QT2u4uAw0LDtTA;
- a video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LCTa4kEPl0;
- and show notes on the website: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/06-herman-daly
Nate Hagens: The Great Simplification
“… a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics will span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future. Guests will be from a wide range of scientists, leaders, activists, thinkers, and doers.”
Rachel Donald: Planet Critical
“… why the world is in crisis – and what to do about it.”
Manda Scott: Accidental Gods
“… the podcast where we believe that another world is still possible, and that together, we can create a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Our aim is to provide the tools we could ever need to understand the potential of this moment — and ourselves within it. In a world where ideas grow faster than anything, we curate the cutting edge of neuroscience and psycho-technologies, connected spirituality and resilience, politics, philosophy and human creativity so that together, in all our diversity, we can choose a different future.”
Tom Murphy: Do the Math
“Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options”
| Website | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu |
| Videos | https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/metastatic-modernity-video-series/ |
| YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@tommurphy2694 |
Steve Keen: Building a New Economics
“The systems-based alternative to mainstream economics”
Blogs and articles
Art Berman
“This data driven analysis produces hard core insights that can open your eyes to what is actually happening in the energy market. Art produces these posts to be accessible to all. Because in a world full of energy chaos, knowledge is power.”
Michael Albert, The Case for Growth Agnosticism
Jem Bedell (2020), Deep Adaptation
Nate Hagens (2020), Economics for the future — Beyond the superorganism
Donella Meadows, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Vaclav Smil, The Modern World Can’t Exist Without These Four Ingredients
Books
Garrett Hardin (1968) “The Tragedy of the Commons“, Science 162
Garrett Hardin (nd), “The Tragedy of the Commons“
Steve Keen (2011), Debunking Economics, Zed Books
Thomas Pikkety (2020), Capital and Ideology, Harvard University Press
Elinor Ostrom (1990), Governing the Commons, Cambridge University Press
Vaclav Smil (2022), How the World Really Works, Viking
Glossary / Jargon Buster
Coming soon….