Glacial retreat on Mount Thielsen, where the southernmost glacier in Oregon was declared extinct in 2020. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The glaciers are rapidly diminishing, even high in the Swiss Alps. AI executives and experts are warning that artificial intelligence could be the downfall of humanity as exemplified by the Hugging Face hack. Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, while horrific deaths and destruction continue in Gaza, the West Bank and the Middle East. The situation of hundreds of thousands of people starving in Sudan stretches our comprehension. Economic uncertainty is contributing to the rise of fascist and far-right movements. Can the old solutions cope when our world is turning upside down?

The term polycrisis has been used by experts to describe multiple crises. But the crucial point is that they are happening at the same time. Geopolitics dominates chronopolitics; space dominates time. The accumulation of crises stretches our intellectual and emotional capacities to respond, leaving us struggling to comprehend what is happening, let alone how to act in time.

Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan wrote recently in the New York Times about the new world order we are not ready for. MacMillan’s warning is that “we don’t expect our world to be turned upside down.” She solemnly describes our current situation: “Temperature records have been set and reset this summer, the earth has baked in droughts, and wildfires have raged. Debt across advanced economies is approaching historic highs. Cuts in medical and food aid, most significantly by the United States, have caused unnecessary deaths and helped the spread of diseases, one of which, sooner or later, could become another pandemic. Artificial intelligence continues its rapid, unregulated rise, threatening jobs, security and, in darker projections, human existence.”

MacMillan’s point is that there are signs that, like in Albert Camus’s The Plague, “there are dead rats all around.” Her analysis is that “We have arrived in a new stage of disorder” and that “We must prepare ourselves, beginning with being honest about the seriousness of the moment we’re in and accepting that our fragile system is faltering.”

All very dire........

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