Which Way To The Least Bad Future?
A new book, Navigating the Polycrisis, has thoughts
I always wanted to know about the future. At the age of 11, I took up palm reading. I got some initial tips from one of my parent’s grad students, who was from India; the rest came from a book I picked up at a used bookstore in the French Quarter.
My first few books were about personal, economic and technological futures. I looked at current conditions to project what might happen next. Writing about youth and education is a way of writing about the future. Our country’s future leaders, citizens, workers, community members have their formative experiences in and out of classrooms in the present day.
It became increasingly apparent that climate breakdown was trumping technological innovation or political decisionmaking in terms of its influence on the future, and, that it was endangering the future of the children I concern myself with (not only my own.) So, I never really changed topics; I changed what I paid attention to in the enduring quest to find out what might happen next.
In this way I came across the term “polycrisis” a few years ago. It refers to the idea that the various crises going on in the world entangle and amplify each other in nonlinear ways.
A very smart friend of mine who follows world events closely scoffed at the term over drinks the other day, and basically his argument was: there’s lots of bad stuff that’s always been happening, like war and famine, and then there’s the climate crisis, but it doesn’t combine into some kind of Mechatron. The term doesn’t necessarily tell us anything new.
I can understand his perspective, but personally I find the term useful. It highlights that we are often thinking too narrowly when we think about the future. For example, there is an enormous, high profile, high-budget education summit that takes place on the West Coast every April, dedicated, they say, to “innovations at scale.”
This past year, they had nearly 100 sessions listed on their schedule about AI.
And zero sessions about climate change. Zero!
Extreme weather is already interrupting school for millions of children around the world; a recent UNESCO report finds climate threatens to reverse global gains made in education in recent decades. On the flip side, education has been identified as a key factor for mitigating the climate crisis. I don’t think you can claim to be innovative in any field, if you’re not factoring in climate.
wrote about climate and education in her newsletter recently—she called out Planet Ed, where I’m an advisor and she chaired one of our task forces.
My future-seeking brain was fascinated to discover the new book Navigating The Polycrisis: Mapping The Future Of Capitalism and The Earth by Michael Albert. Albert, a lecturer in Global Environmental Politics at the University of Edinburgh, digests an enormous amount of research from different disciplines to spin out different scenarios: utopian, dystopian, and ustopian (a Margaret Atwood coinage, combining aspects of both).
I called him up to talk about it. This is his simple definition of the polycrisis: “I think we’re facing a set of interlinked systemic crises that unfold on a longer scale.”
The book enumerates them this way:
1) Energy. Not only are fossil fuels unsustainable, but they’re getting more expensive and difficult to extract. Yet we don’t have the infrastructure in place to switch to renewables tomorrow. Hurdles include: financing for renewables; conflicts over land use and minerals; hard-to-abate sectors like aviation, plus the sometimes violent resistance and repression by fossil wealth and the politicians they buy.
2) Food—drought, deforestation, soil depletion, nutrient depletion in a high-CO2 environment. Quoting the New York Times Magazine: “The world as a whole is already facing what the Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett calls a “food polycrisis.”
3) Climate Chaos—disasters, pandemics, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, tipping point scenarios, increased heat stress, etc.
The New York Times had a terrifying, and clarifying, package on climate tipping points recently.
4) Both a source of potential crises, and an important positive factor: Technology: greentech, AI, 3D printing, broadly beneficial innovations, also advances in warfare (‘democratizing warfare’ with cheap drones and suitcase nukes) and surveillance.
5) Economy: As implied by the phrase “late capitalism”; boom-bust cycles, the unsustainability of constant growth, the unjustness of the concentration of capital, ongoing disruptions to global trade, finance, and supply chains;
6) Disorder: migration, conflict, violence, repression, protest movements, and war, even nuclear war.
I was keenly interested to read that Albert also identifies a 7th factor, which arises in reaction to, and also amplifies the other factors: The existential crisis. Crises of the mind, or of meaning. The undermining of truth and consensus reality. Epidemics of isolation, depression and anxiety, suicide and overdose deaths, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic ideologies, conspiracy theories, religious fundamentalism and cults.
There’s another factor that I’m really interested in, that Albert doesn’t mention, and that’s demographics—declining + aging population. I’ll talk about that more in a future newsletter, because I think it’s really important. It just underlines how complex all of this is.
Fun stuff! It’s hard to fault people who only look at the bits they know, or who are too afraid to look at any of it at all. “It can be more of a conversation stopper,” Albert acknowledged to me. “Most people are struggling within the current system and dealing with their own shit.”
But not you, dear reader. You signed up for this!
And, I found, there’s a real satisfaction, and even some hope, in Albert’s lucid attempt to confront these realities. After all, he writes, one thing is certain:
“‘Business-as-usual’ will come to an end—whether by choice or by disaster.”
I really recommend you read the book to fully unpack the scenarios he sets forth as plausible over the next century.
But to give these scenarios very short shrift here:
1. Neoliberal Drift:
No major revolutions in the status quo. As civilization is buffeted by crisis after crisis, we don’t have the energy to evolve into a new more complex system. We pass between 2.7°C and 3.2°C by 2100, and life is more and more unlivable in more and more places; the world keeps getting more unequal and more conflict-ridden, reverting to historical norms, with the Pax Americana of the 20th century now a distant memory.
Collapse: Probably. Total collapse is definitely an option; the only thing that could save it would be unforeseen technological advances.
2. Green Keynesian:
The implicit promise of the UN’s IPCC COP, and other big gatherings of the ruling elite: governments and business come together and accelerate the transition to a sustainable future. Albert writes, “Could give us a shot at the 2°C target if it happens soon enough.” The world stays about as unequal, though maybe with some realignments: For example, what if Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and other Global South countries formed a “battery metal OPEC”?
Collapse: Less likely than it is now.
3. Fossil nationalism/fossil fascism:
Putin’s and Exxon’s dream. We suck out and frack every last drop of fossil fuel, restricting the spread of renewables to keep energy prices high enough to justify the effort. Climate crisis intensifies. Bunkers and wealth for a few, misery for most, enforced by increased oppression. Global apartheid; technologically enforced border walls everywhere.
Collapse: Almost everywhere.
4. Ecosocialism:
People’s movements, and the implosion of the economy due to climate disruption, force a radical realignment. We build a consensus that the purpose of the economy is to help people thrive, and not the other way around.
Maybe this is mostly degrowth and small-scale anarchism, or it could be solarpunk and “ecomodernist,” more technologically dependent, with stronger states that administer essential services, universal basic income, climate reparations, and public ownership of accelerated green innovation. A little bit Octavia Butler, a little bit Kim Stanley Robinson.
Collapse: Partial, followed by rebuilding.
Of course, within each of these scenarios are many possible sub-scenarios, and they might coexist— for example, in “fortress degrowth,” there are limited areas with a thriving “lifeboat ecosocialism” reserved for the wealthy and those who work for them, but sustained by oppressive border regimes and counterterrorism.
Haunting all these scenarios is the probability of eventual collapse. This can be defined different ways, and occur to different degrees, and importantly, already exists in certain places (Gaza, Haiti, Yemen come to mind). Very broadly we’re thinking about a society with declining amounts of energy and food being produced, declining complexity in the overall organization of society, less social order, fewer social services, weaker government, and declining population. Climate projections between 2 and 3 degrees of warming give us a picture of an overall less habitable world. At the far end of possibilities is human extinction.
I want to acknowledge that holding that idea can be scary! It gives me a sense of vertigo, like peering into an abyss.
And also—have courage.
Besides “polycrisis,” the other term that’s worth unpacking in this book is “navigating.” Albert chose “navigating” rather than “resolving” or simply “understanding,” because it gives us a sense of agency, not control.
“Navigating, it means we're moving through it,” he told me. “It’s not necessarily about, you know, fixing everything.”
He concludes the book with a muscular, and moving, definition of optimism.
“Our optimism should not reside in the belief that we can and will create a more sustainable and just world, but that we can collectively discover new ways of life and new sources of meaning, purpose, community—and even joy—no matter what the future brings.”
I can see that.