Systems Thinking for the Global Phase-Shift

From planetary emergency to evolutionary emergence

The Musk-Trump Plan for Total American Collapse

A systems lens suggests a quarter of GDP could evaporate on a pathway to violent civil unrest, concentration camps, and genocidal violence that would be a free gift to Putin

13 min read

The End of Scarcity? From ‘Polycrisis’ to Planetary Phase Shift

We are all feeling it. Grief, despair, anxiety, chaos. This essay, which distils the planetary phase shift framework, gives you the tools to see through the chaos to recognise emerging possibilities of a new system that could enable superabundance beyond our wildest imaginations.

39 min read

War with Iran, the Planetary Phase Shift and Global System Paralysis

Unfolding conflict across Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran is not just a regional breakdown, but a global systemic rupture in the context of the planetary phase shift as industrial civilisation moves through the last stages of its life-cycle.

17 min read

Confronting Fascism in the Final Stage of the Life-Cycle of Industrial Civilisation

When we look at the rise of the global far-right through a systems lens, we can recognise that it as a symptom of crisis and collapse - as well as the potential for renewal. Today, humanity stands at a political inflection point in which the only viable path forward involves total transformation.

18 min read

Israel and Hamas are locked into a system of genocidal violence. It could lead to permanent war.

Drawing on my research on genocidal colonial systems, I explore how the original concept of genocide invented by Polish Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin suggests that Hamas and Israel are both complicit in the co-production of genocidal violence.

17 min read

A New Beginning

2024 - the opportunity for a new beginning. What has this newsletter achieved so far, and where do we go next on the journey toward our post-carbon future?

5 min read

We’re Crossing a Global Tipping Point on Fossil Fuels and There’s No Going Back

The post-oil genie's out of the bottle. It ain't ever going back. Get ready for the new world that's emerging.

6 min read

I warned leaders at COP28 that the age of oil is over - with or without ‘phase out’ plan

After decades exposing fossil fuel interests, I've realised it's not about dismantling the old. We must enable the new with finance, technology & system change. The West’s biggest carbon polluters are deflecting from this necessity, in ways that have carefully obscured what really derailed COP28.

11 min read

Dear White Environmentalists: Demanding Fossil Fuel Phase Out is Not Enough

8 min read

The Beginning of the End of Oil is Here... Now What?

The world's energy watchdog has called it - end of the oil age is imminent. But the world is deeply unprepared for what this means - and we're still underestimating the speed, scale and consequences of what's coming. This is the greatest disruption in human history. Here's how we get ready.

11 min read

The Future Grid: Global, Interconnected and Abundant

2 min read

From BRICS, to Africa, to COP28, we're scaling a geopolitical 'turning point' on climate

A global consensus is emerging – among both clean energy pioneers and even some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers – that the age of oil is over, and that we must do all we can to accelerate the clean transformation of the global energy system in a way that is just.

13 min read

The Collapse of Civilisation is an Unprecedented Opportunity

Collapse is not the end - it's the beginning. The fear and uncertainty of this time signals the obsolescence of old ways of being. As we step into the unknown, truly new ways of being are emerging. Our challenge is to seize on and amplify these opportunities.

15 min read

Culture Wars Are a Symptom of Earth System Crisis

Why are our societies, politics and culture getting more and more polarised? A systems lens reveals it's no accident. It's a symptom of the twilight of the current life-cycle of civilisation as a new one dawns. From ISIS to Brexit, the entire global system is flipping into a new order....

16 min read

Debating the transition: will materials undo clean energy?

I got into a debate about whether we have enough materials for the clean energy transition with someone who I fundamentally disagree with - and we managed to talk it through to create a shared understanding about our emerging post-carbon future

3 min read

Bangladesh Can Leapfrog the West through Solar Abundance

As I travel to Bangladesh, the home of my ancestors, I reflect on how a country struggling to emerge from the ravages of colonisation faces the unprecedented opportunity to become a solar super power

14 min read

The Coming Dawn of a Global Solar Civilisation

We can build a new clean energy system based on distributed abundance and empathic intelligence that helps us solve some of our biggest challenges

14 min read

Why transformation of the global energy system is now unstoppable

We've passed a global energy transition tipping point making dominance of solar, wind and batteries inevitable and irreversible within decades. A whole new system is being born. But technology alone can't save us: we need a collective shift in mindset, values and governance.

16 min read

The Future of Human Civilisation is African

Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change. But the biggest untold story is that Africa represents the future of global civilisation, and the key to a new era of unimaginable abundance within planetary boundaries.

10 min read

First stage of abrupt climate catastrophe has begun by crossing Arctic tipping point

This is the era of accelerating climate breakdown. The disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice is now inevitable. We've crossed a dangerous tipping point at risk of triggering others. Yet pathways to transformation over the next 15 years could still pull us back from collapse.

9 min read

The Fossil Fuel Energy Cliff and the Great Oversimplification

Recent claims that renewables represent an inevitable energy descent are derived from a new form of 'energy blindness' that ignores the best EROI systems science.

19 min read
AGI

AI and the Global Phase-Shift: How AI Will Really Change the World

AI represents the Fifth Great Information Disruption since human settlements first arose. It will be unstoppable and all-encompassing - and it could help us breakthrough to a new system premised on earth-centered collective intelligence, or spiral into breakdown and collapse.

20 min read

AI doomers are wrong. The 'existential threat' is about who controls information - not the singularity

Fear that AI is an existential threat to humanity is going viral. But there's little evidence that God-like AI superintelligence is possible. The real threat comes from the abuse of AI to manipulate information - which could derail civilisation at a crucial turning point in history.

13 min read

Energy transformation won’t be derailed by lack of raw materials

A 1,000 page report influencing IMF, UN and EU policymakers claims we don't have enough materials to support a global shift to clean energy. But the report is deeply flawed, based on indefensible unscientific assumptions, and totally ignores key scientific findings.

33 min read