Download or read book Navigating the Polycrisis written by Michael J. Albert and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Critical analysis of the convergence of global crises facing humanity and their implications for our planetary future"--

Download or read book Navigating the Polycrisis written by Michael J. Albert and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative work of realism and utopianism that analyzes the possible futures of the world-system and helps us imagine how we might transition beyond capitalism. The world-system of which we are all a part faces multiple calamities: climate change and mass extinction, the economic and existential threat of AI, the chilling rise of far-right populism, and the invasion of Ukraine, to name only a few. In Navigating the Polycrisis, Michael Albert seeks to illuminate how the “planetary polycrisis” will disrupt the global community in the coming decades and how we can best meet these challenges. Albert argues that we must devote more attention to the study of possible futures and adopt transdisciplinary approaches to do so. To provide a new form of critical futures analysis, he offers a theoretical framework—planetary systems thinking—that is informed by complexity theory, world-systems theory, and ecological Marxism. Navigating the Polycrisis builds on existing work on climate futures and the futures of capitalism and makes three main contributions. First, the book brings together modeling projections with critical social theory in a more systematic way than has been done so far. Second, the book shows that in order to grasp the complexity of the planetary polycrisis, we must analyze the convergence of crises encompassing the climate emergency, the structural crisis of global capitalism, net energy decline, food system disruption, pandemic risk, far-right populism, and emerging technological risks (e.g. in the domains of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and nuclear weapons). And third, the book contributes to existing work on postcapitalist futures by analyzing the processes and mechanisms through which egalitarian transitions beyond capitalism might occur. A much-needed work of global futures studies, Navigating the Polycrisis brings together the rigor of the natural and social sciences and speculative imagination informed by science fiction to forge pathways to our possible global future.

Download or read book Welcome to the Great Unraveling written by Richard Heinberg and published by . This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, policy think tanks have increasingly adopted the term polycrisis to signify humanity's destabilized status quo. "Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown" seeks to build a coherent narrative about the roots of the polycrisis, the signs of its arrival and evolution, and why we should be thinking differently about the future.

Download or read book Navigating Uncertainty written by Ian Scoones and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-07-24 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will hold. For many contemporary challenges, navigating uncertainty – where we cannot predict what may happen – is essential and, as the book explores, this is much more than just managing risk. But how is this done, and what can we learn from different contexts about responding to and living with uncertainty? Indeed, what might it mean to live from uncertainty? Drawing on experiences from across the world, the chapters in this book explore finance and banking, technology regulation, critical infrastructures, pandemics, natural disasters and climate change. Each chapter contrasts an approach centred on risk and control, where we assume we know about and can manage the future, with one that is more flexible, responding to uncertainty. The book argues that we need to adjust our modernist, controlling view and to develop new approaches, including some reclaimed and adapted from previous times or different cultures. This requires a radical rethinking of policies, institutions and practices for successfully navigating uncertainties in an increasingly turbulent world.

Download or read book Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change written by William M. Throop and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change explores skills we need to successfully navigate the distinctive environmental, social, and economic challenges of the twenty-first century. Our inability to address increasing resource constraints, social conflict, and ecological decline lead many toward a deep pessimism that saps motivation for change. Drawing on research from environmental science, ethics, psychology, sociology and educational theory, William M. Throop shows why cultivating underdeveloped skills involved in collaboration, humility, frugality and systems thinking can enable flourishing within our context. He also illustrates how we can strengthen such skills individually and how education can scale up their cultivation, which will be essential for achieving sustainability. Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change is a hopeful, practical resource for readers passionate about creating a world where we can thrive, and where flourishing is widespread.

Download or read book Economic Growth and Societal Collapse written by Wim Naudé and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-23 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been said that, in the light of ecological overshoot, that human civilization faces two future possibilities: a Great Decoupling or a Great Collapse. In this book, two distinct positions to achieve the Great Decoupling are critically evaluated: Green Growth and Degrowth. It is concluded that neither Green Growth nor Degrowth will be able to achieve the Great Decoupling. The possibility for society to collapse is then raised, with the potential for a civilizational rebound pondered. Whether collapse may be a feature, and not a bug, of the long-run evolution of complex civilization is discussed. This book offers a thought provoking and unique perspective on the economic and ecological challenges faced by modern societies. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in environmental economics and economic policy.

Download or read book So We and Our Children May Live written by Sarah Augustine and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will we choose life for our children and the future of our planet? Everywhere we look, we see signs that all is not right with our earth—extreme temperatures and weather patterns wreak havoc, pollutants sour soils and waterways, and fires and floods ravage land and communities. Climate change is just a symptom of a larger ecological crisis. If we want change, we must realize that the solutions to the problems we face can’t come through the same systems that created those problems in the first place. Ecological justice requires that we challenge our assumptions about creation and our relationship to it. It requires decolonization. We must turn to the leadership of Indigenous communities who struggle for all life as land and water protectors, and must call on people of faith to join them. ​ This book offers hope for a better future alongside concrete actions for joining with Indigenous Peoples to protect life and negotiate with decision-makers for sustainable change that follows Jesus. In these pages, readers are called to confront climate change and choose life for our children and the future of our planet.

Download or read book Crashed written by Adam Tooze and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK "An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature of the European and American financial systems."--The New York Times Book Review From the prizewinning economic historian and author of Shutdown and The Deluge, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all—the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats—a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences.

Download or read book Enhancing Global Governance in a Fragmented World written by Huiyao Wang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores the 'polycrisis' currently affecting nearly all nations by exploring key themes such as multilateralism and globalization from the perspective of think tanks from nearly every continent, searching for various solutions to the ills that currently plague the world and a way to create a future in which everyone benefits. As China's preeminent non-governmental think tank, the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) has invited 30 leading figures from the global think tank community to sift through the myriad layers of multilateralism and global governance and provide a contextual analysis of major themes both from a theoretical and practical perspective that focus on China in detail, but also examine the world as a whole. Think tanks are essential in analyzing current trends and providing potential solutions that aid governments, international organizations and business in finding solutions that are beneficial to all. As a key source of innovative ideas, they have become even more valuable today as the pace of change accelerates, geopolitical complexity increases and the world has to deal with global crises that no country can address on their own. A common, central theme through all of the 25 essays in this book is the need for a more universal, inclusive and multilateral approach to reforming global governance. It is our hope that the views of the experts from think tanks and other non-governmental organizations in this compilation will provide valuable insights to help heal the gaps in our fragmented world.

Download or read book Transforming Food Systems written by Molly D. Anderson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the contested nature and competing narratives of food system transformations, despite it being widely acknowledged that changes are essential for the safeguarding of human and planetary health and well-being. The book approaches food system transformation through narratives, or the stories we tell ourselves and others about how things work. Narratives are closely connected with theories of change, although food system actors frequently lack explicit theories of change. Using political economy and systems approaches to analyze food system transformation, the author focuses on how power in food systems manifests, and how this affects whom can obtain healthy and culturally appropriate food on a reliable basis. Among the narratives covered are agroecology, food sovereignty and technological innovation. The book draws on interviews and recorded speeches by a broad range of stakeholders, including international policymakers, philanthropists, academics and researchers, workers in the food and agricultural industries and activists working for NGOs and social movements. In doing so, it presents contrasting narratives and their implicit or explicit theories of change. This approach is vitally important as decisions made by policymakers over the next few years, based on competing narratives, will have a major influence on who will eat what, how food will be produced, and who will have a voice is shaping food systems. The overarching contribution of this book is to point toward the most promising pathways for achieving sustainable food systems and refute pathways that show little hope of achieving a more sustainable future. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers interested in creating a sustainable food system which will ensure a food secure, socially just and environmentally sustainable future.

Download or read book Future Energy Options from a Systems Perspective written by Nick King and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​This book is an exploration of energy and its unique role to date as one of the fundamental enabling and controlling factors in human development and progress at the scale of global civilization, and how it will be fundamental to the type of future that collective humanity is likely to experience. The first section provides a contextual overview of energy and human civilization through a chronological description of how human energy use has evolved over time and led to the current ‘energy bind’. The second section explores what this energy bind might mean for our future energy choices when trying to meet the various challenges of dwindling resources, costs, and climate change, through exploration of three broad systems-based scenarios for the human ‘energy future’. The final section draws conclusions as to which scenario is most achievable and desirable, and what this might mean for longer-term human prospects.

Download or read book International Economic Policy for the Polycrisis written by Konrad Raczkowski and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The struggle for world leadership between China and the United States, resulting in Russia's war with Ukraine, among other things, underscores the reality of structural changes in the global economy and the global system. This book explains that a new era of egocentrism and polycrisis in a multipolar system has emerged in international economic policy, with a strong drive toward interventionism and protectionism of national economies. Dynamic economic imbalances are becoming a constant factor in disrupting international competitiveness and forcing changes in both monetary policy and general economic policy. This prompts a new, more pragmatic definition of fundamental concepts in the theoretical sphere as well as an up-to-date and viable cause-and-effect narrative that is not disconnected from decision-making processes in the economic and political spheres. This book provides a comprehensive diagnosis of the current global economy landscape and evaluates the processes affecting the economic and financial realities and the effectiveness of economic policies. The recent dynamics have rendered much of the existing literature outdated or confined to individual economies, economic systems, and regions. The book describes the evolution of international economic policy, offering a comparative analysis of foreign trade theories, especially in the context of macroeconomic trends and the impact of international trade in goods and services in the new balance of power of the global economy. Targeted primarily at academics, students, and researchers in economics, finance, international relations, and management, it will also serve as a valuable resource for policymakers shaping and implementing contemporary state economic policies.

Download or read book Untamed Urbanisms written by Adriana Allen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An electronic version of this book is available Open Access at www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. One of the major challenges of urban development has been reconciling the way cities develop with the mounting evidence of resource depletion and the negative environmental impacts of predominantly urban-based modes of production and consumption. This book aims to re-politicise the relationship between urban development, sustainability and justice, and to explore the tensions emerging under real circumstances, as well as their potential for transformative change. For some, cities are the root of all that is unsustainable, while for others cities provide unique opportunities for sustainability-oriented innovations that address equity and ecological challenges. This book is rooted in the latter category, but recognises that if cities continue to evolve along current trajectories they will be where the large bulk of the most unsustainable and inequitable human activities are concentrated. By drawing on a range of case studies from both the global South and global North, this book is unique in its aim to develop an integrated social-ecological perspective on the challenge of sustainable urban development. Through the interdisciplinary and original research of a new generation of urban researchers across the global South and North, this book addresses old debates in new ways and raises new questions about sustainable urban development. .

Download or read book The Banks Did It written by Neil Fligstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the rise and fall of the mortgage-securitization industry, which explains the complex roots of the 2008 financial crisis. More than a decade after the 2008 financial crisis plunged the world economy into recession, we still lack an adequate explanation for why it happened. Existing accounts identify a number of culpritsÑfinancial instruments, traders, regulators, capital flowsÑyet fail to grasp how the various puzzle pieces came together. The key, Neil Fligstein argues, is the convergence of major US banks on an identical business model: extracting money from the securitization of mortgages. But how, and why, did this convergence come about? The Banks Did It carefully takes the reader through the development of a banking industry dependent on mortgage securitization. Fligstein documents how banks, with help from the government, created the market for mortgage securities. The largest banksÑCountrywide Financial, Bear Stearns, Citibank, and Washington MutualÑsoon came to participate in every aspect of this market. Each firm originated mortgages, issued mortgage-backed securities, sold those securities, and, in many cases, acted as their own best customers by purchasing the same securities. Entirely reliant on the throughput of mortgages, these firms were unable to alter course even when it became clear that the market had turned on them in the mid-2000s. With the structural features of the banking industry in view, the rest of the story falls into place. Fligstein explains how the crisis was produced, where it spread, why regulators missed the warning signs, and how banksÕ dependence on mortgage securitization resulted in predatory lending and securities fraud. An illuminating account of the transformation of the American financial system, The Banks Did It offers important lessons for anyone with a stake in avoiding the next crisis.

Download or read book Rebuilding Higher Education Systems Impacted by Crises Navigating Traumatic Events Disasters and More written by Kayyali, Mustafa and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2024-04-05 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The resilience and adaptability of higher education systems are under unprecedented strain. From natural disasters to pandemics, and economic crises to political turmoil, universities and colleges worldwide have grappled with a myriad of crises that disrupt their core missions of teaching, research, and community engagement. As we find ourselves at the crossroads of these tumultuous times, the imperative to reconstruct and revitalize higher education systems becomes increasingly evident. Rebuilding Higher Education Systems Impacted by Crises: Navigating Traumatic Events, Disasters, and More is a pioneering work that addresses the critical issues surrounding the restoration of higher education systems in the wake of various crises. This book serves as a roadmap for educators, administrators, policymakers, and stakeholders who share a commitment to preserving and advancing higher education, even in the face of adversity. The 21st century has witnessed a rapid escalation in the frequency and severity of crises affecting higher education institutions. These crises span from the abrupt shift to online learning necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic to the enduring ramifications of climate change on campus infrastructure. Additional factors such as financial pressures, evolving demographics, and the ever-changing technological landscape further complicate the challenge. This book embarks on a deep exploration of these challenges and offers practical solutions, making it an indispensable resource for anyone vested in the future of higher education.

Download or read book Confident Identities Connected Communities Building Cohesion Through Shared Experiences written by Chan-hoong Leong and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2023-11-17 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to promote greater understanding of social cohesion amidst existing complexities of faith and identity, and what it portends for our future.Social cohesion defies easy definition; yet, every pursuit of social cohesiveness requires nurture, patience and a consensus that it is germane to the success of any community. Indeed, challenges abound, developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic, evolving geopolitical tensions, and a rise in access to technology impact social cohesion. In such times, it is pertinent to maintain on-going conversations revolving around social cohesion to bridge the divides through diversity and technology.This book continues to build on the conversations from the second edition of the International Conference of Cohesive Society (ICCS), held from 6-8 September 2022 in Singapore. Over 25 essays across three ICCS 2022 themes — How Faith Can Bridge Divides, Diversity, and Technology — present international and interdisciplinary perspectives in building confident identities and connected communities.

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Crisis Leadership in Higher Education written by Choon-Yin Sam and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a frame of reference for the global challenges facing higher education leadership today. Focusing on recommendations and directions for the future rather than simply a recap of measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, the contributors also delve into contexts such as the climate crisis, issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, digitalisation, funding and marketisation, the war in Ukraine and China-Taiwan and Hong Kong tensions. They collate a systematic, global view of higher education systems during the pandemic and beyond, and explore possibilities for the future, providing recommendations for "the new normal". With contributions from across six continents, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of higher education and governance, university leaders, government and accreditation bodies, and anyone else interested in reflecting on the past few years in higher education and the road ahead. Jürgen Rudolph is Director of Research and Learning Innovation at Kaplan Singapore. Joseph Crawford is Senior Lecturer in Management, Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education), University of Tasmania, Australia. Sam Choon Yin is Dean (Academic Partnerships), Kaplan Singapore. Shannon Tan is Research Executive at Kaplan Singapore.