"Flattening the environmental #polycrisis into a supposedly singular crisis of greenhouse emissions obscures the many ways in which Western civilization degrades the environment — ways that often don’t lend themselves so readily to #EngineeringSolutions or economic profit to be made from the transition to “green” technologies and which demand a more fundamental reckoning with our civilization’s lopsided relationship with nature."
I get things are weird and eschatological in the #polycrisis, but emotional regulation is a form of #GenerationalWealth.
By LOSING YOUR SHIT at the slightest provocation and expressing those emotions across digital networks, you are playing the role of the persona whom the antagonists are seeking to trigger.
..and they gave him a fucking award for it, and economists act like he's god's gift to science because he doesn't straight up deny climate change or its impact.
@ai6yr Just think of all the methane & waste that protocol will generate! (Yes, I am totally composting any and all dead chickens I encounter into soil, not landfilling them). #PolyCrisis#Compostodon
Welcome to the Great Unraveling
An Orientation to the Polycrisis
Join us at 11:00 AM US Pacific Time on Thursday, May 14, 2024 for Welcome to the Great Unraveling: An Orientation to the Polycrisis, a free online event that will help you get clarity on the big picture.
From featured speakers Dr. Lyla June Johnston and Kumi Naidoo, you’ll learn:
How humanity’s pursuit of endless growth got us into this mess
Why climate change, biodiversity loss, and other issues are symptoms of a larger systemic problem
A framework for understanding the converging crises of the 21st century
Ways you can get involved in being part of the solution
These are uncertain times. But with understanding comes power.
Join us for this enlightening session that will equip you to face the future with knowledge, purpose, and hope.
Everyone who registers will receive a link to the recording after the event.
Decent read. It has the same format as most 'intro to #degrowth' articles:
"The current idea is green growth. Sounds good, right?"
"Oh wait that's empirically impossible"
"Here's the new idea: degrowth. It's the only way we avoid environmental collapse"
"But achieving that is such a huge task that it appears impossible, because a growth based economy, vested interests and cultural inertia make it politically untenable"
There is one big, gaping hole in the article, however. It completely avoids talk of interlinked natural systems, which is a key reason why green growth is bogus.
Yes, we can decouple some environmental impacts from economic activity, like emissions, but many we can't. That's why the problem facing us gets called the #polycrisis - it's not just climate that's the problem but the pressure we're placing on all Earth's systems.
#ClimateDiary Today a colleague texted: brace yourselves! Redundancies email at 12pm! In fact it still hasn’t come (though it will). But i was irrationally angry with my colleague for rather ruining my day, making it harder to give lecture etc. I just really don’t want to know until it happens. Totally head in the sand about this. Made me relate much more to people not wanting to hear about #ClimateCrisis - they too just want a bit more blissful denial, because the news are too bad. 1/2
2/2. Well, we have now had the email. 130 FT redundancies. That will be more when PT are included. We are 644 so potentially a quarter of us.
By now those reflections ⬆️ on knowing in advance feel irrelevant; it all just feels, and is awful. But there is still a connection to the #ClimateCrisis ; it is all interlinked. Capitalism destroys life.
"We’re focused on gathering as many examples of past crises as we can. These are periods of social unrest that often result in major devastation — things like famine, disease outbreaks, civil wars and even complete collapse.
Our goal is to find out what drove these societies into crisis, and then what factors seem to have determined whether people could course-correct to stave off devastation."
Thanks to @DoomerGirlNews for the link to this fascinating piece.
"Right now, we are living in an age of #polycrisis – a state where social, political, economic, environmental and other systems are not only deeply interrelated, but nearly all of them are under strain or experiencing some kind of disaster or extreme upheaval."
Even so, it is far from inevitable that we will succumb to #SocietalCollapse.
"By looking back at past polycrises (and there were many) we can try and figure out which societies coped best."
To face #polycrisis, what it takes is the courage to acknowledge that the systems and policies that have worked so well so far, won't deliver solutions to novel threats.
We need to do things differently, and
we need to do it together.
Meaning:
"Those with the means and opportunity to enact change must do so, or at least to not stand in the way when reform is needed."
Got privilege? you need to use that, for the greater good.
#ClimateDiary#floods
In my own little version of “how will the #Polycrisis unfold” - will i lose my job first die to collapse of Goldsmiths/higher education or will my commute become untenable due to #ClimateChange? I can report that it looks like the latter today
There's an interesting discussion on what some call the #polycrisis -- the set of interrelated, growing problems the world faces from #climate change to #fakenews etc -- over at The Well, in the "State of the World 2024" discussion with @bruces and @jonl
The problem with any intertwingled set of problems / "wicked
problems" / the #polycrisis is that our usual approach to solving
problems -- analyzing scope and shape of the problem, dividing,
working down the list one item at a time -- doesn't really work. The
list is too long, too intertwingled, we don't understand enough how
one thing impacts all the others, and by the time we might if we
spent the time, the situation has changed too much to make the
analysis still useful....
"""
The purpose, the idea of the concept is simply to open up the threads through which you can begin to see the connections. If you just read a newspaper or watch the news, you are presented with this collage that begins to just look incoherent and crazy to the point where you begin to wonder whether you will actually be able to trust your own senses.
What the polycrisis concept says is, ‘Relax, this is actually the condition of our current moment’.
"""
"Given the scope of things going wrong simultaneously in environmental and social systems, the term #polycrisis has come into vogue. The stark warnings and evidence from physical and social scientists alike have been ignored by most politicians, business leaders, influencers, and everyday citizens.
#ClimateDiary As 2023 is ending, I recall my hopeful optimism a year ago that 2023 might be a #TurningPoint for climate awareness, carbon emissions plateauing and #Transition / #Regeneration - it being the 50th anniversary of Schumacher’s #SmallIsBeautiful and all that (see 🧵 in link) .
I kept on sharing this great cover (“the new world is almost born” #Gramsci). But has 2923 been a turning point? 1/5
#ClimateDiary 4/5 At this point, this year, I am very very tired and genuinely scared about what 2024 will bring, climate and otherwise (in what order will it all unfold? #Polycrisis).
BUT: of course the idea of a single year being a real turning point, perceptibly so at the time, is a fallacy. It will never be that. All positive social change is incredibly slow and feels like nothing but set backs for those involved. It is only afterwards that you see how all the small changes and actions
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities#AcademicChatter#neoliberalism
Yesterday we were informed we will have 130 FT redundancies. More with part time staff included. We are 644 so potentially a quarter of us. From 11 departments, including #anthropology.
We don’t know yet who. I don’t know how these decisions are made (it’s related to which programmes or modules will be closed). I feel completely sick the whole time. Far beyond venting, just existential fear.
@inquiline thank you so much. I am almost a bit surprised by how much it has been affecting me- it feels like everything is spinning all the time. I wonder whether that’s because it is so much part of everything else we are observing and worrying about; the #Polycrisis etc; or because of ongoing, stupid over-identiifcation with Goldsmiths and Anthropology; or whether that is just what it’s like. But working hard now on saving Anthropology at Goldsmiths (and our jobs)!