Climate change, resource depletion, extreme weapons, AI, and more: Richard Heinberg looks at the individual threats composing the unprecedented convergence of risk leading us to a global polycrisis. Though he finds no easy answers, he concludes that humanity’s collective survival will require setting aside our hubris and coming to terms with environmental and social limits.
The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote that, in warfare, it is essential to know both your enemy and yourself. Today, humanity has “enemies,” including climate change and nuclear weapons, that are capable of destroying civilization and whole planetary ecosystems. So far, we are not defeating these enemies—which we ourselves created.
Indeed, even more existential risks are coming into view, including the disappearance of wild nature and the proliferation of toxic chemicals that undermine the reproductive health of humans and other creatures. So many new and serious threats are appearing, and so quickly, that a word has come into currency to describe this unprecedented convergence of risk—polycrisis.
Our collective inability to reverse the rising tide of risk implies a failure of understanding: we don’t know our enemies; moreover, we evidently don’t know ourselves, because if we did, we wouldn’t continue generating such problems.
People have always faced challenges. But what is happening now implies a different scale of consequence. Unless we change the direction and momentum of events, global systems on which humanity depends for its existence will unravel, and civilization with it.
It is essential that we step back from whatever we are doing and mentally come to terms with the polycrisis. Three questions demand answers: What is the full spectrum of risks that we face? Why are we failing to manage or reduce these risks? And finally, since these risks are human-generated, why are we creating so many threats to our own future?
The Risk Spectrum of the Polycrisis
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