Change Oracle’s Polycrisis Project

Through a systems thinking lens, the individual crises associated with the 2026 war in Iran are all facets of a singular crisis.  The resultant cascade of damaging consequences illustrates the feedback loops that define the global polycrisis. The same hyper-connected...

An ever-expanding web of feedback loops is converging to generate system-wide risks—collectively known as the polycrisis. The cascading effects of interconnected crises represent the collision of four deeply intertwined systems: ecology, economics, politics, and social dynamics. Actions in one domain...

Listen as a podcast Earth’s life-support systems are failing.  Humanity is surpassing critical environmental thresholds and increasing the risk of triggering irreversible climate tipping points. It is hard to overstate the perilousness of our trajectory. While we have seen incremental...

Related The Increasing Inequality Surge Understanding Societal Inequality: History, Types, Causes and Effects

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man.” Ernest Hemingway Inequality is increasing all around the world and this exacerbates the constellation of crises known as the global polycrisis.  Except for the century following the Black Death...

Global inequality is both a driver and a symptom of today’s polycrisis—a convergence of social, economic, political, and environmental challenges. Disparity takes many forms and arises from a complex web of causes. Intersecting systems of discrimination and disadvantage reinforce inequity...

In the second part of this special edition podcast, Change Oracle's Richard Matthews discusses the logic of inaction with Tom Schuneman, the owner of the Planet Watch Group and Editor of Global Warming Is Real. They explain that the crises...

Societal collapse may be the wake-up call we need to stave off extinction. The ongoing failure to respond to the maelstrom of interrelated crises is moving us ever closer to a dystopian nightmare. While this may seem like hyperbole, the...

Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, social upheaval, and political chaos are all manifestations of a singular crisis—a global polycrisis.   The evidence is all around us. We are inundated by blaring alarms signaling multiple problems, yet we have not responded...

In a recent special edition podcast, Change Oracle's Richard Matthews discusses the polycrisis concept with Tom Schuneman, the owner of the Planet Watch Group. Citing the rise of authoritarianism and our obsession with growth as examples, they explain how the...