Over the last 15 years, I’ve developed a comprehensive holistic meta-systems perspective on the unprecedented convergence of crises facing modern civilisation. The three key works spanning this decade are A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (Pluto, 2011), Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (Springer, 2017), and my most recent Planetary Phase Shift theory paper (2024).

This latter builds on other work including The clean energy transformation: a new paradigm for social progress within planetary boundaries (2022), a ‘deep dive paper’ published by the Club of Rome which drew on the RethinkX report Rethinking Climate Change which I oversaw as research editor, and my RethinkX policy report, Rethinking Energy: Germany’s Path to ‘Freedom Energy’ by 2030.

Through these outputs, I’ve developed an integrated theoretical and empirical framework for understanding global systemic crises as symptoms of a fundamental civilisational transition that is generating unprecedented risks while also creating unprecedented new possibilities for transformation.

In this essay, I synthesise insights from these works to explain the holistic systems framework I call the “planetary phase shift.” The goal is to unpack how my earlier analyses of systemic crisis, energy depletion, and socio-political destabilisation inform and elucidate my more recent work on technology disruptions, societal change and the features of the planetary phase shift now underway.

What Keeps Me Up At Night and Awake All Day

This essay begins by revisiting my early ‘Crisis of Civilisation’ thesis, which posited in 2010 (when my first draft of the book was complete!) that seemingly disparate global issues – climate change, energy scarcity, food insecurity, economic instability, terrorism, and militarism – are interlinked facets of an overarching systemic crisis integral to the current global political-economic order.

In Failing States, Collapsing Systems, I further link biophysical stressors (like peak oil, climate disruptions, and resource depletion) to outbreaks of social unrest and state failure. This 2017 work refines the crisis framework by exploring feedback loops between Earth System Disruption (ESD) and Human System Destabilisation (HSD), and by identifying historical “phase shifts” in human societies driven by energy transitions.

Building on these foundations, the Planetary Phase Shift framework articulates a transdisciplinary model in which the ongoing “polycrisis” represents something deeper: the back-loop of a planetary-scale adaptive cycle – the turbulent collapse and reorganisation phase of global industrial civilisation. Multiple global crises across ecological and social domains are thus understood as interconnected symptoms of the terminal stage of the fossil-fueled industrial age, and the birth pangs of a whole new post-carbon, post-materialist system. This heralds either systemic collapse or the emergence of a new civilisational paradigm.

This essay will map out key interconnections, feedback loops, and dynamic patterns that recur across these works. We will explore the utility of the planetary phase shift framework as a forward-looking tool for collective intelligence and strategic foresight. And we will apply the framework to contemporary global developments – from energy transitions and climate instability to geopolitical upheavals and social fragmentation to illustrate how it can help make sense of and respond to these emergent challenges, viewed anew as signals of humanity’s perilous yet potentially transformative planetary transition.

The Crisis of Civilisation

 In A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, I present a comprehensive reassessment of the “global predicament” of the 21st century by examining a range of major global crises in an integrated way. Rejecting compartmentalised analyses, I created the first peer-reviewed social science framework showing that problems in climate, energy, food, economy, and geopolitics are not isolated aberrations, but deeply interwoven symptoms of a single civilizational crisis.

It's not a ‘polycrisis’ – it’s one crisis

I identified a fundamental flaw in mainstream policy responses: they treat crises as separate and fixable with incremental adjustments, whereas in reality these crises are “integral to the ideology, structure and logic of the global political economy.”

In other words, issues like climate change or financial instability are systemic outcomes of how our industrial civilisation is organised, rather than accidental malfunctions.

Accordingly, no amount of minor or even major policy reform can fully resolve these crises within the existing system – only a “drastic reconfiguration of the system itself” can do so. Failure to enact transformative change, I warned, will result in escalating breakdowns as the root causes remain unaddressed. As a result, I've always seen the recent popularisation of the 'polycrisis' concept as a poor way of conceptualising the systems dynamics of what's actually happening.

The simultaneous, multiplicity of the crises is itself a surface symptom of one singular crisis related to way our civilisation works. Key arguments from my Crisis of Civilisation 2011 framework can be summarised as follows:

• Global crises are systemic, not anomalous: Far from being random “blips,” recurring crises (from economic crashes to ecological disasters) stem from how our civilisation extracts energy, produces wealth, and distributes power in the context of neoliberal capitalism.

• Incremental fixes are inadequate: Because these crises are baked into the current system, they cannot be solved by tweaking policies or adopting single-issue solutions. Only a fundamental transformation of global systems can curtail the convergence of crises. I likened this to the need for a phase change; without fundamental systemic change, crises will continue to intensify.

• Crises are interconnected and mutually reinforcing: Conventional experts often analyse problems in isolation, missing their coupled dynamics. Major crises “must be understood holistically as intertwined in their causes and hence interrelated in their dynamics.” For example, climate change, energy scarcity, and food insecurity interact such that each can amplify the others in amplifying feedback loops. This interdependence means the global system can enter a dangerous spiral where multiple stressors converge. In a worst-case “business-as-usual” scenario, multiple global crises systematically converge via interdependent amplifying feedback mechanisms, greatly accelerating the pace of global systemic disruption. In this scenario, shocks in one domain (e.g. an oil supply crunch) cascade into others (economic recession, food shortages, conflict), “magnifying the impact of specific crises throughout the system.”

This leads to the following conclusion: the mounting crises indicate that industrial civilisation has entered a period of systemic transition. Rather than viewing these disruptions with “paralysing horror,” we need to recognise them as signals that the current civilisational model is reaching its end-of-life and “signify the inevitability of civilisational transition.”

The Great Transition and Where it’s Going

Escalating global crises “demonstrate the inevitability of two world events before the end of this century: (1) the end of industrial civilisation as we know it; and (2) the coming of post-carbon society.” By century’s end, the fossil-fueled, growth-driven industrial paradigm will have exhausted itself, one way or another. What follows it – a collapse into chaos or a transition to a sustainable post-carbon civilisation – is still undetermined, presenting humanity with a historic crossroads.

I frame this dual outcome in terms of danger and opportunity: the danger of systemic collapse and regression versus the opportunity for an “enlightened civilisational revival.”  The very forces that threaten societal breakdown could become catalysts for renewal if humanity proactively uses this crisis as an opening to “grasp the reins of history” and consciously shape a new system.

Indeed, several civilisational collapse theorists note that the breakdown of complex societies can enable creative reorganisation (what Thomas Homer-Dixon calls “catagenesis,” or renewal through breakdown). In this view, the potential collapse of industrial civilisation is not just a catastrophe to fear, but also “heralds the hope for ‘catagenesis’ – renewal through breakdown… followed by the emergence of a novel form of society.”

In A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, six major crisis arenas – climate change, energy depletion (peak oil), food insecurity, economic instability, international terrorism, and the militarisation tendency – are mapped out to explore how they interlock with one another.

Climate change exacerbates water and food crises, which in turn can ignite social conflict; the demise of cheap oil threatens economic growth and food production; economic malaise and inequality fuel political extremism and violence; in response, governments reflexively turn to militaristic strategies (surveillance, counterterrorism, resource wars) that often worsen underlying problems. Each chapter paints a piece of a broader puzzle in which all the stressors combine into one meta-crisis. In the “Final Analysis,” these strands are tied together: the convergence of crises is driving an irreversible phase shift in global civilisation – essentially, an adaptive cycle tipping point. The end of the fossil-fueled era of endless material growth is inevitable; the task at hand is to manage this transition in a way that leads to a positive new societal configuration (“post-carbon civilisation”) rather than a chaotic collapse.

The Crisis of Civilisation as a framework

Global crises are seen as an integrated complex which can be understood using systems concepts (like feedback loops, tipping points, and adaptive capacity). Human civilisation is embedded within Earth’s biophysical limits, invoking the need to be aware of the “thermodynamics of the fossil fuel system” – meaning that industrial civilisation’s expansion had been enabled by massive energy inputs (coal, oil, gas), and as those inputs enter decline while generating ecological entropy (e.g. climate change), the system’s dynamics fundamentally shift.

Civilisation is ultimately a complex adaptive system – an emergent macro-system – containing many different  subsystems from the geosphere (geology, climate, etc.), the biosphere (ecosystems), and the human socio-cultural sphere (economies, governments, technologies, beliefs). These subsystems interact in myriad ways, producing emergent behaviours at the civilisational level (for example, the global economy’s growth trajectory, or the overall impact of humanity on the carbon cycle). Crucially, each crisis corresponds to stresses in specific subsystems, but none of these subsystems operates in isolation – their interactions generate system-wide effects and feedbacks. Thus, analysing climate, energy, food, or financial crises in silo misses how they influence one another within the “wider global human-environmental system.” This approach “systemically locates” multiple crises as “interconnected features of a wider world-scale crisis in human civilization as an emergent macrostructure.” This holistic viewpoint allows identification of emergent patterns – for example, that multiple crises seem to be breaching critical thresholds in unison, suggesting an impending phase change in the system’s overall state.

In summary, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization established several foundational ideas for the planetary phase shift framework: (1) that modern civilisation is facing a constellation of crises that are systemic in nature and portend the end of the current order; (2) that these crises are interdependent and synergistic, requiring holistic analysis; (3) that the trajectory of these crises points toward an imminent transition (a “post-carbon revolution”) as industrial civilisation becomes unsustainable; and (4) that such transitions have historical precedent in the cyclic rise and fall of societies, implying that collapse and renewal are two sides of a civilisational life-cycle. These concepts laid the groundwork for my subsequent exploration of how exactly the transition might play out, especially with regard to energy and political stability.

Energy Decline and Socio-Political Destabilisation

By 2017, when I released Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence, global events had in many ways begun to vindicate my earlier warnings. The decade after the 2008 financial crisis witnessed an “unprecedented outbreak of social protest in every major continent,” from the Arab Spring and Occupy movements to unrest in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Several states disintegrated into civil war or chronic instability (Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc.), and even wealthy nations saw surges in political turbulence. In Failing States, Collapsing Systems, I connect these upheavals to the deeper systemic stresses highlighted in 2011 – most centrally, the unfolding end of cheap fossil fuel energy.

Energy scarcity and political violence

My core thesis here was that the 21st-century eruption of political violence and state failures is being catalysed by biophysical crises – particularly the “end of the age of cheap fossil fuels”. Despite media narratives attributing unrest solely to ideology, corruption, or poor governance, this research – conducted under my fellowship at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute - shows that many recent conflicts have roots in resource depletion, energy scarcity, climate-induced droughts, and related economic stresses. These factors erode states’ capacities to meet public needs, heighten grievances, and ignite unrest – a dynamic obscured when observers focus only on surface political triggers.

The ESD-HSD model

Failing States, Collapsing Systems frames this argument through a model of Earth System Disruption (ESD) driving Human System Destabilisation (HSD). ESD refers to large-scale environmental and resource pressures – e.g. climate change, energy decline, food and water shortages – which undermine the foundational “sub-systems underpinning state integrity.” HSD refers to consequent social crises such as economic collapse, political unrest, mass migrations, or conflict that destabilise human societies. ESD and HSD are not separate phenomena but part of one coupled process: “ESD… and HSD… are inherently interconnected, feeding back into each other.”

In many conflict zones – Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and others – one can trace a direct line from energy and environmental stressors to social breakdown: “HSD in the form of… political violence has been fueled by ESD driven by interconnected biophysical processes of climate change, energy depletion and food crises.” This insight added empirical heft to my Crisis of Civilisation framework, by showing concretely how the convergence of environmental and energy crises translates into real-world political violence and state collapse.

Importantly, the ESD-HSD conceptual model also captures the feedback loop dimension: societal destabilisation (HSD) often provokes responses that can exacerbate the original environmental stresses (ESD), creating a vicious cycle. For example, governments facing unrest may double down on exploiting remaining fossil fuel reserves to revive growth or may engage in resource wars – short-term fixes that intensify long-term depletion and climate change. Additionally, security-centric responses to crises (military interventions, crackdowns) treat the symptoms of destabilisation while ignoring root causes, allowing underlying ESD to worsen.

This can drive a global feedback loop in which (1) ESD drives HSD; (2) HSD triggers traditional “securitised” responses by states focused on military and political control; (3) these responses fail to address – and often aggravate – the environmental and resource disruptions; thus (4) ESD intensifies, leading to further HSD. This self-reinforcing cycle can propel a system toward collapse if no corrective intervention (a fundamental shift in how we manage resources and security) occurs.

In Failing States, Collapsing Systems, I apply the ESD-HSD framework to a series of case studies that illuminate this global pattern.

One case is Syria: prior to its civil war, Syria experienced a severe multi-year drought (2006–2010) – likely intensified by climate change – that devastated crops and displaced rural communities. This ecological shock, combined with peaking oil production that reduced Syria’s export revenues, strained the Syrian state’s capacity and contributed to public discontent. When unrest erupted in 2011, it was easy to blame repressive governance alone, but as I noted: “climate change played at least an indirect role in catalysing the Syrian conflict” by exacerbating a drought that led to social dislocation, which was then mismanaged by an Assad regime whose power was crumbling as its oil revenues haemorrhaged due to peaking of its domestic conventional oil. The conflict drew in external military interventions (US, Russia, regional powers), yet these actions aimed at the symptoms (insurgency, terrorism) and not the causes (water scarcity, resource stress). The result was a protracted war that further wrecked Syria’s environment and infrastructure – a textbook example of the ESD-HSD spiral.

Another case is Nigeria, where the rise of the militant group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region can be partly attributed to desertification, lake drying, and chronic poverty in the north. As I noted, “lurking behind the emergence of Islamist militancy in Nigeria is the specter of climate change and its impacts on an already deeply unequal society,” including drought and land degradation that fuel conflicts between farmers and herders. Additionally, Nigeria’s heavy dependence on oil exports (and government fuel subsidies) meant that global oil price volatility and local oil shortages (an energy aspect of ESD) led to economic hardship and protests. Thus environmental and energy factors have created conditions exploitable by extremist movements – again linking ESD to HSD.

Energy and civilisational shifts

These cases need to be understood in a historical systems context which is introduced in Failing States, which revisits the concept of civilisational “phase shifts” – major transitions in how human societies are structured – with an emphasis on energy regimes. Throughout history, societies have undergone a series of transformative shifts, each characterised by a new energy source and associated social organisation. For example, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies involved the domestication of plants and animals (a new energy strategy), while the shift to industrial capitalism was enabled by harnessing coal and oil.

Human social evolution can be seen as a succession of energy-metabolic phase shifts: muscle power, agriculture, coal-powered industry, petro-industrial capitalism, the current era of high-tech global capitalism. Each phase shift in the dominant energy system accompanied the development of new relations of production (e.g. feudalism, then industrial capitalism, then the current neoliberal finance-dominated capitalism). Crucially, these transitions are not clean breaks but build upon previous layers: “each new phase-shift… often builds on or incorporates older structures within a new, wider structural context,” in a nested hierarchy. Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons – systems that are wholes made of smaller parts – explains how each stage of civilisation tends to integrate prior stages into a more complex whole.

Why is this historical perspective important? Because it contextualises the current crisis as the next inevitable phase shift. The modern global system – “late” industrial capitalism fueled by fossil fuels and expanding complexity – has reached unprecedented heights of complexity and resource consumption. It has been phenomenally successful at creating wealth and technological advancement, but at the cost of drawing down the Earth’s finite stocks of high-quality energy and materials. Today’s global economy sustains its “distance from thermodynamic equilibrium via the throughput of vast quantities of increasingly depleted fossil fuel reserves, along with other finite and increasingly scarce resources (metal ores, rare earths, phosphate, arable land, fresh water, etc.).”

Thermodynamics and the limits to complexity

In other words, our civilisation maintains its complex order (low entropy locally) by consuming concentrated energy and matter and dumping waste (increasing entropy globally). As those concentrated resources are exhausted, the ability to keep growing and keep complexity intact diminishes. One indicator is the relentless need for GDP growth: “Under capitalist... relations, GDP must continuously increase… simply for businesses to survive… and for the economy to meet the needs of the population.” Should growth stall due to energy or ecological limits, the system’s stability is threatened. This analysis here aligns with Joseph Tainter’s theory that societies collapse when they can no longer afford the costs of complexity, and with Homer-Dixon’s warning of “synchronous failure” if multiple stresses peak together.

We are living through the onset of such a failure: the “phase of late capitalism” driven by neoliberal globalisation, digital technology, and fossil fuels is reaching diminishing returns. The surge in instability around the world – financial crises, inequality, political extremism, failing states – are symptoms that the system’s complexity and resource demands can no longer be sustained within existing structures. This is why we see both rising inequality (wealth/power is concentrated to keep the core of the system going) and rising volatility (peripheral regions and vulnerable populations fall into crisis). The wealth generated by the current phase has been accompanied by “an unprecedented degree of global inequality between the core... and the periphery” – a sign that the system’s adaptive capacity is narrowing to a small elite, leaving the rest more vulnerable to shocks. All these factors indicate that industrial civilisation is entering its “release” phase (to use adaptive cycle terminology) – a period of structural breakdown and simplification.

To summarise: Failing States, Collapsing Systems sharpened the causal linkages between environmental limits (especially energy) and socio-political crises, providing empirical evidence that the “crisis of civilisation” was not a vague notion but a measurable reality manifesting in world events. It introduced a clear model (ESD-HSD feedback) explaining how converging biophysical stresses translate into state failures and violence.

It reinforced the idea of an ongoing phase shift by situating current trends in the long sequence of human societal transformations driven by energy regimes. And it reiterated that what we are witnessing is not just a temporary recession or a series of unfortunate conflicts, but a fundamental systems transition – essentially the unravelling of one pattern of civilisation in preparation for a new one. I wrote that humanity is experiencing a “fundamental socio-ecological, cultural and technological metamorphosis oriented around the demise of fossil fuels,” which could lead to “societal simplification and collapse” or to “renewal and evolution”.

Planetary Phase Shift Theory: A Holistic Systems Framework

In late 2024, my peer-reviewed paper “‘Planetary phase shift’ as a new systems framework to navigate the evolutionary transformation of human civilisation” was published in the journal Foresight. This work synthesises and formalises my previous work into a cohesive theoretical framework for understanding the current global transition. The objective was to create a “collective forward intelligence framework” for futures studies, aimed at making sense of disparate trends across ecological, social, and technological domains as part of one planetary system undergoing transformation. In doing so, I hoped to address a noted gap in foresight research: the lack of a unifying systems model that can integrate empirical data from many different sectors and scales.

The adaptive cycle

At the heart of planetary phase shift theory is the adaptive cycle concept drawn from ecology and complex systems science. C.S. Holling’s adaptive cycle model was originally developed to describe how ecosystems pass through phases of growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganisation. In this paper I integrate this with the notion of phase transitions in the physical sciences. By “reengineering Holling’s framework in the context of ‘phase transition’ phenomena,” planetary phase shift theory creates a bridge between ecological-systems thinking and historical social change. The adaptive cycle provides a conceptual template for the “life-cycle” of complex systems, whether forests, economies, technologies or whole civilisations.

In this paper, I apply this model at the planetary-civilisational scale and map current empirical trends onto it.

What is the adaptive cycle? In Holling’s theory (also known as the Panarchy model when extended to multiple scales), a living complex adaptive system typically goes through four stages: rapid growth (exploitation), conservation (maturity), release (collapse), and reorganisation (renewal). During the growth (r) phase, a system exploits abundant resources and expands quickly, accumulating structures and “capital.” In the conservation (K) phase, growth slows as the system becomes efficient and maximises use of existing resources; the system becomes more rigid and tightly connected, trading resilience for efficiency. Over time, this can lead to fragility: the system is highly adapted to a stable environment, so when a perturbation or tipping point occurs, the accumulated structure breaks down in a release phase (often denoted Ω). The release phase is a rapid breakdown where energy and resources that were locked up are suddenly freed (for example, a forest fire, or a market crash). This destructive phase, however, opens space for innovation and reorganisation (α): novel combinations can form, and the system can reorganise into a new configuration, potentially starting a new growth phase

The adaptive cycle thus captures both the creative and destructive forces in system evolution. It also distinguishes a “front loop” (r  K, the slow, incremental growth and accumulation) from a “back loop” (Ω  α, the chaotic release and renewal). The back loop is when uncertainty is highest and change happens fastest – a critical time when the system can either collapse completely or adapt in novel ways. Holling also emphasised that such cycles are nested in hierarchies (panarchies): smaller, faster cycles (e.g. innovations in a niche) can influence larger, slower cycles (e.g. economic or political structures), and vice versa.

In living systems, the adaptive cycle moves through both ‘hardware’ (biological structure) and ‘software’ (the information by which this structure is encoded via DNA).

Therefore at the macro-level of human civilisation – one of the largest living socio-ecological systems on the planet – planetary phase shift theory posits that civilisation moves through its adaptive cycle in two intertwined ways: through material infrastructure and technology; and through socio-economic, cultural and political organisation.

Implications for global civilisation

My core finding is that, when we attempt to determine where civilisation is in its life-cycle by examining data from both these material and cultural dimensions, global industrial civilisation appears to be in the late stages of an adaptive cycle – specifically, the turbulent back-loop of release and reorganisation.

The multitude of crises we observe (financial instability, climate extremes, energy transitions, geopolitical upheavals, social unrest, technological disruptions) are “symptoms of the last stages of the life-cycle of global industrialisation [sic] civilisation”. In the terms of the adaptive cycle, the long front-loop of fossil-fueled expansion (roughly the 18th through 20th centuries, the r and K phases of global growth and capital accumulation) has reached a point of over-extension and rigidity. The signs of the impending release (Ω) stage include the loss of system resilience (e.g. economic systems are highly efficient but prone to cascading failures), depletion of foundational resources (e.g. peaking conventional oil, eroding ecological services), and emergent crises that cannot be managed by existing institutions. The data now suggests that humanity “has arrived at an unprecedented historic and geological turning point.” This reflects both a historical moment (the end of an era in human socio-economic development) and a geological moment (the Anthropocene crisis of Earth systems).

The “polycrisis” – a term often used to describe the current convergence of crises – is reframed in planetary phase shift theory as “multiple simultaneous phase transitions and adaptive cycles across constitutive subsystems of the earth system and the human system.”

In simpler terms, many parts of our global system are going through rapid changes at once: the energy sector is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables (with all the instability that implies); the climate system is moving out of the stable Holocene conditions into a far hotter state; economies are fluctuating between growth and contraction; political orders are teetering amid revolts and authoritarian counter-movements; cultural and information systems (the rise of the internet, AI, etc.) are disrupting old structures.

These are phase transitions at various scales, but importantly, they are interconnected and synchronised by the fact that for the first time, there is a single dominant global system – a planetary civilisation – integrating all these subsystems. Human civilisation can be conceptualised as a “planetary-scale energy-dissipating ‘superorganism’” that obeys thermodynamic and evolutionary principles. This superorganism (global civilisation) grew during the front-loop by consuming vast energy (fossil fuels) and is now entering an energetic crisis leading to a metamorphosis. The outcome of the back-loop phase we are in could be collapse (if the system cannot successfully reorganise and simply falls apart as a highly complex but brittle structure) or renewal (if a new stable configuration – a new “operating system” for civilisation – can emerge).

Empirical analysis across key sectors

To give this theoretical model more tangible grounding, in my paper I integrate empirical data and trends from key sectors into the analysis, focusing on energy, food, transport, materials, and information – the “foundational sectors of civilisation’s production system” – showing how each is at a tipping point.

For example, energy data indicates peaking and decline of the EROI (Energy Return on Investment) of fossil fuels and the rapid growth of higher EROI renewables; food data shows rising vulnerability of industrial agriculture amidst new potential for precision fermentation and cellular agriculture, whose disruption of livestock farming could also pave the way for regenerative agriculture at scale; information trends show exponential growth in digitalisation, AI, and robotics, potentially disrupting manual labour. By mapping these onto the adaptive cycle, we can see a clear picture of global industrial society exhausting the old basis (fossil fuel energy, unrestrained material throughput) and simultaneously pioneering elements of a new basis (superabundant renewable energy amidst shrinking material throughput), albeit amid intensifying turmoil as the transformation unfold.

Importantly, we can see clear empirical evidence that these new technologies emerging across every foundational sector of civilisation are experiencing exponential adoption. Drawing on empirically-validated technology forecasting methods, this suggests that in coming decades, every sector of civilisation will have been shifted as these technologies scale, disrupt and displace the preceding ones. Critically, technologies are not simply one-for-one substitutions within the same static system – they represent entirely new system rules and properties for how we materially produce the things we need; and therefore, to manage them requires a wholly different set of organisational, economic, cultural and governance rules and norms.

Historical insights and future scenarios

Historical analyses of past civilisational cycles reinforces the conclusion that what we face is structural. Studies have applied the adaptive cycle to societies ranging from the Maya to the Roman Empire to medieval Europe, and often found a pattern of growth and collapse analogous to ecological systems. Despite these insights, there has been little use of the adaptive cycle concept in foresight for our current global system.

To visualise the planetary phase shift concept, we can map the adaptive cycle stages to the history and prospective future of global civilisation:

The above is a stylised adaptive cycle of global industrial civilisation, mapped over time. In this depiction, the exploitation (r) phase corresponds to the era of rapid industrial growth, the conservation (K) phase to the late 20th-century regime of globalized “Great Acceleration” and peak complexity, the release (Ω) phase to the 21st-century phase of crises and breakdown (the current “polycrisis” period), and the reorganisation (α) phase to a potential future transition toward a new sustainable civilisation.

My analysis suggests we are now in the Ω stage – a period of systemic crisis and decline of the old order. Multiple indicators support this: stagnating economic growth in mature economies, diminishing returns on technological development, increasingly frequent disasters outpacing society’s adaptive responses, and the unravelling of international political cooperation. The α stage, meanwhile, is nascent but visible in pockets – in the rise of alternative economies (sharing economies, local resilience initiatives), breakthroughs in clean energy and ecological restoration, and even in new philosophical outlooks.

There is a battle of narratives between those trying to restore or prolong the status quo (which is failing) and those trying to innovate toward a new paradigm. This framework doesn’t guarantee that a positive reorganisation will win out, but it frames the stakes clearly: either the global system transitions to a new stable state that can thrive within Earth’s ecological boundaries (a true “sustainability” paradigm), or it collapses into a fragmented, less complex state (a new dark age perhaps) before potentially reconstituting later, or collapsing entirely.

Nested systems and panarchy

A critical aspect of the planetary phase shift model is its emphasis on nested scales and cross-scale interactions (panarchy). The global system’s fate is influenced by dynamics at regional, national, and local levels, and vice versa. For instance, a local community adopting sustainable practices might serve as a seed of innovation (α phase at a small scale) that can be scaled up, while a collapse in a key region (say, a country that fails) can reverberate globally (as Syria’s collapse led to a refugee crisis affecting many nations).

We can illustrate the idea of nested systems as follows:

This diagram offers a simplistic presentation of how global civilisation is an emergent complex system comprising multiple layers: it is built upon Earth systems (geophysical processes, climate, biosphere), and contains myriad human sub-systems (economies, governments, cultures, technologies). Crises in any layer can propagate to others. The planetary phase shift involves transformations across all layers in tandem.

The human-environment system is thus “comprised of a vast interlocking array of nested sub-systems, including… the earth’s geology, resources, oceans, and atmosphere; multiple… ecosystems; and human systems… (ideological, economic, technological, political structures).”

The planetary phase shift must therefore be understood as a multi-level phenomenon: it’s not just one monolithic system flipping state, but a cascade of transitions from the biosphere up through the sociotechnical sphere.

I draw on the concept of Panarchy (from Gunderson and Holling) to denote this nested set of adaptive cycles. Panarchy theory suggests that resilience and innovation often come from lower scales during a collapse at higher scales (for example, local communities might preserve knowledge and experiment with new forms of living when empires fall). Conversely, rigidity at a higher scale can trap lower scales (global economic rules can constrain national responses to climate change, for instance). Recognising these interactions is key to navigating the transition.

Strategic implications for foresight

The planetary phase shift framework can improve scenario analysis and planning by providing a more coherent “big picture” of where current trends are heading. It urges decision-makers to consider the possibility of nonlinear change – that the future may not be a slow continuation of familiar trends, but rather a radical shift of state. For example, instead of projecting continuous economic growth, planners should contemplate scenarios where growth stops or reverses due to phase shift dynamics. The framework also highlights which signals to monitor: if we are in a back-loop phase, metrics of system resilience (like redundancy, diversity, social cohesion) might be more important to track than metrics of efficiency or output. This approach can lead to “more robust approaches to foresight, scenario development and forecasting” by grounding them in empirically based systems theory.

The practical and social implications are clear: we need bold, transformative strategies at all levels of society in response to the planetary phase shift. Incremental reforms or isolated technological fixes will not be sufficient; what’s required is a fundamental reimagining of values, goals, and structures – essentially designing the “new operating system” for civilisation during the reorganisation phase. I describe this as “innovating new values, worldviews and operating systems with a focus on the next lifecycle.”

This aligns with the idea that during the back-loop, it is crucial to experiment with alternatives that could form the basis of the next life-cycle. Civil society, innovators, and forward-thinking leaders should use the planetary phase shift lens as a collective intelligence tool – pooling knowledge across disciplines to identify leverage points for positive transition. For instance, recognising that energy transition is the linchpin (given fossil fuel demise), global effort could be concentrated on equitable and rapid deployment of renewables and energy efficiency to stabilise that aspect of the system and avoid a looming energy crunch collapse. Similarly, understanding the risk of societal fragmentation, effort could go into conflict resolution, strengthening local resilience, and protecting the vulnerable during the tumultuous transition.

Synthesis: A Holistic Phase-Shift Framework for Global Transition

Bringing together these insights, we can now outline a unified holistic framework – the Planetary Phase Shift Systems Framework – that explains our present global crisis and potential futures as part of a single complex adaptive cycle. The framework rests on several key pillars:

Civilisational Life-Cycle:

Human civilisation is a complex adaptive system that evolves through cyclical phases (growth, accumulation, crisis, renewal). The current global civilisation (industrial, capitalist, fossil-fuel-based) is in its late conservation phase and entering the release (collapse) phase, as evidenced by simultaneous crises and declining returns on complexity. This is not the end of civilisation per se, but the end of one form of civilisation – a necessary precursor to a new form (if humanity navigates it successfully).

Polycrisis as Phase Transition:

What the policy world calls a “polycrisis” – climate change, ecological degradation, resource depletion, economic instability, geopolitical conflict, pandemic risk, etc., all interacting – is, actually the manifestation of multiple phase transitions in the human-earth system. These are not independent problems hitting us coincidentally; they are interwoven symptoms of the old system breaking down (losing stability) and a new one struggling to be born. Recognising this reframes how we address the crises: rather than tackling each in isolation, the task is managing a coherent transition of the whole, while moving the centre of gravity to the emerging new system.

Energy and Ecology at the Core:

Energy decline (especially the end of cheap, high-EROI fossil fuels) and ecological overshoot (exceeding planetary boundaries like climate stability) are identified as fundamental drivers of the crisis. These biophysical factors at are the center: the global economy’s fortunes and nation-states’ stability are ultimately grounded in energy and ecological conditions (the “thermodynamic foundations” of civilisation. Thus, the planetary phase shift is above all an energy and ecological transition, from which increasingly flow social and political upheavals.

Interconnected Subsystems and Feedback Loops:

The framework maps out how different subsystems and crisis domains interconnect. It highlights feedback loops such as the ESD-HSD cycle where environmental stress leads to social crisis, which then feeds back negatively on the environment. Another key feedback is economic growth vs. resource depletion: attempts to reflate growth (through stimulus, debt, exploitation) can temporarily delay collapse but worsen resource exhaustion and inequality, setting the stage for a bigger crash later. There are of course feedbacks in the climate system (e.g. amplifying feedbacks accelerating warming) as a non-linear threat that can abruptly worsen human prospects. In sum, the framework is not linear cause-and-effect but a network of interactions – a systems map of global crisis.

Nested Scales (Panarchy):

The framework incorporates multiple levels of analysis: local, regional, global. A phase shift at the global level is composed of many local and regional collapses and innovations. Case studies of specific countries in crisis (Syria, Nigeria, Yemen, Egypt, etc.) show how local phase shifts (state failures) tie into the global phase shift. The nested concept underscores that resilience and transformation often start from the bottom-up: communities innovating new practices might be the seeds of the new civilisation, while top-down structures might be the last to change (and first to crumble if they resist change). It encourages a polycentric response to the crisis – multiple scales of action – instead of overreliance on centralised solutions.

Historical Analogues and Trajectories:

While focusing on the unprecedented planetary scale of today’s crisis, the framework is informed by historical patterns of rise-and-fall. The idea that “global crises are… symptoms of civilisational transition” is backed by examples like the Roman Empire’s collapse which followed a peak in complexity and resource overreach. The framework therefore sees our situation not as an inexplicable apocalypse, but as a systemic process that has analogues (though partial) in past collapses. This gives both warning signs (e.g. runaway elite wealth amid declining general well-being is a common precursor to collapse) and hope (societies often regenerate in new forms after collapse, as with the Renaissance after the Middle Ages). It also implies that learning from past transitions – and from the longue durée of human evolution through various modes of subsistence – is crucial for navigating the current one.

Phase Shift Stages and Strategic Interventions:

By delineating the stages of the adaptive cycle in the current context, the framework identifies where interventions might be most effective. During the release (Ω) stage, which we are in, the priority is managing the collapse safely – i.e., preventing the worst outcomes (total systemic failure, irreversible losses) and preparing the ground for reorganisation. This includes actions like safeguarding critical ecosystems and knowledge (so they can support renewal), building shock absorbers for communities (food and energy security, social safety nets), and “breaking the stranglehold of conventional thinking” to allow new solutions to emerge. A “fundamental epistemological shift recognising humanity’s embeddedness in the natural world” is also needed – essentially, a new paradigm of thought to replace the outdated ideologies of endless individualistic material accumulation and human separation from nature. In the reorganisation (α) stage, the goal is to scale up successful experiments (like regenerative agriculture, renewable energy microgrids, cooperative economic models, etc.) into a coherent new system to pave the way for a “post-industrial civilisational life-cycle”.

What will this look like? A renewable-based energy system, circular economy, relocalised production with global information sharing, a culture shift towards well-being over consumption, political structures that are more participatory and aligned with ecological realities. The framework encourages foresight exercises that imagine such futures and chart pathways to them.

Collective Intelligence and Foresight:

The planetary phase shift doubles as a call for a new kind of collective problem-solving. In a fast, complex transition, no single expert or institution can have all the answers. Thus a “collective forward intelligence” approach is required – pooling knowledge from systems science, social science, local communities, indigenous wisdom, etc., to build a shared understanding of the crisis and coordinate responses. This is essentially a systems learning process at the global scale. By providing a common framework (the adaptive cycle / planetary phase shift model) and common language (resilience, tipping points, feedbacks, etc.), the framework aims to assist this collective intelligence process. It helps disparate actors see how their pieces fit into the whole, fostering a more integrated strategy.

To illustrate the integrated framework in action, let us apply it to a few contemporary dynamics:

Climate and Energy Transition:

The accelerating impacts of climate change (mega-fires, heatwaves, floods) together with the plateauing of conventional oil production constitute clear ESD forces pushing the system toward release. The framework would advise that instead of treating these as separate (one for environmentalists, one for economists), we treat them as a coupled problem of energy restructuring. The decline of fossil fuels is forcing a reorganisation of the energy basis of civilisation – which could either be chaotic (scramble for remaining resources, collapse of energy-intensive economies) or managed (massive investment in renewables, efficiency, and perhaps carbon drawdown to stabilize climate). Currently, we see both: some actors doubling down on drilling and coal (which delays collapse a bit but worsens climate), others pushing Green New Deal policies (which aim to use the reorganisation window to pivot to sustainable energy). The planetary phase shift framework highlights that timing is critical: actions in this decade (the heart of the back-loop) will determine if we can exit the fossil fuel regime smoothly or disastrously. It also underscores co-benefits – e.g., a rapid renewable energy build-out can alleviate climate change and reduce resource conflicts, tackling multiple crises at once.

Geopolitical Upheaval (e.g. war in Ukraine, great power tensions):

Traditional analysis views these in power-politics terms, but the planetary phase shift lens adds depth. The war in Syria, as discussed, had roots in a convergence of repressive government, ecological mismanagement, climate disaster and oil decline. The war in Ukraine can similarly be examined for energy dimensions (Europe’s dependence on gas, Russia’s petro-state income) and how the stresses of globalisation’s stagnation breed authoritarian aggression. The framework would predict increasing conflict in a collapsing system, but also note that such conflicts further disrupt energy markets and food supplies, feeding back into the global crisis (as seen with grain shortages and higher fuel prices worldwide after 2022). The lesson drawn might be that pursuing global stability through military blocs is futile if the underlying planetary phase shift dynamics are ignored; cooperation on energy transition and climate adaptation might do more for peace. Over the longer run, if a new cooperative international order is to emerge (part of reorganisation), it likely has to be based on mutual aid through the transition (e.g., sharing clean tech across borders, welcoming climate migrants to compensate for labour shortages) rather than zero-sum competition over dwindling resources.

Societal Polarisation and Authoritarianism:

As faith in the prevailing organising system norms and values crumbles due to the declining efficacy of that system as crises intensify, rising authoritarian nationalism has become a frequent a response. The framework contextualises this as a common feature of systems under stress: facing complexity and fear, there’s a tendency to revert to simplistic solutions or strongman figures (a regressive response in the back-loop). However, authoritarianism that doubles down on the old model (e.g. propping up fossil industries, suppressing dissent) can actually worsen the eventual collapse by wasting the opportunity to adapt. The alternative is a turn toward inclusive, wise leadership that openly acknowledges the need for deep change (think of leaders or movements that call for climate mobilization and economic reform akin to wartime efforts, but democratic). The phase shift narrative could empower civil society to demand that kind of leadership by illustrating that clinging to the past is a path to ruin. It essentially says: “We have to choose – do we retreat into fortress mentalities and denial (which is a dead-end), or do we consciously design a new future together?”

Public Health Crises (e.g. pandemics)

The COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as part of the phase shift turbulence – a shock that exposed fragilities in global systems (supply chains, public health, trust in institutions). Many have noted links between environmental disruption and disease (zoonotic spillover driven by habitat loss). But even if this was a case of a lab experiment gone wrong (whether deliberately or otherwise), it remains a symptom of industrial overreach and interference in the natural world. The response to COVID showed both fragmentation (nationalist vaccine hoarding) and unprecedented scientific collaboration (rapid vaccine development). The framework would suggest treating pandemics not as one-off disasters but as features of a hyper-connected world under stress. Building resilience (localising essential production, strengthening healthcare, global surveillance for new diseases) is part of increasing the adaptive capacity of civilization in its reorganization phase.

In essence, we need to see the connections: how a drought, an uprising, an oil price spike, a financial crisis, a heatwave, a misinformation campaign, and a new technology invention might all be related within one giant transition.

And we need to take anticipatory action: rather than dreading each crisis as it comes, recognise the trajectory and steer it. Foresight and collective intelligence are about using our knowledge of complex systems to guide the phase shift toward the opportunity side of the spectrum.

The Planetary Phase Shift as a Foresight and Intelligence Tool

This approach allows us apply systemic foresight – the practice of anticipating future developments in a holistic, systems-aware way – and to improve collective intelligence – society’s ability to understand and respond to complex challenges.

Enhancing collective intelligence

By reframing current events within a unifying theory of transformational change, the planetary phase shift framework helps break down the silos in which experts and institutions often operate. Climate scientists, energy analysts, economists, security strategists, and others can find common ground in this framework, since it links their domains into one narrative of change. This promotes more integrated strategies. For example, a government using this approach might form interdepartmental “transition teams” that jointly address energy, economic, and social policy as one portfolio, aiming for resilience and sustainability outcomes.

From a strategic planning perspective, the framework highlights both risks and opportunities in a clear way. On the risk side, it identifies plausible collapse pathways (scenarios where multiple stresses overwhelm adaptive capacity) so that early warning indicators can be monitored. On the opportunity side, it identifies leverage points (for instance, energy transformation is a leverage point: a breakthrough in storage or fusion energy could profoundly shape the trajectory). It also legitimises bold action: if we truly accept that we are in a once-in-a-civilisation planetary phase shift, then incrementalism is out of step with reality. This can justify emergency-scale responses like climate mobilisation or regenerative economic transformation.

Another contribution to foresight is the emphasis on non-linearity and phase transitions. Traditional forecasting often misses the drivers of abrupt shifts. The adaptive cycle reminds us that systems can flip suddenly – like a forest that stands for centuries then burns in a week. In human terms, this could be a sudden financial crash, a rapid regime change, or a technological tipping point (positive or negative). A foresight approach informed by the planetary phase shift framework would emphasise stress-testing plans against such discontinuities. Preparing for a range of phase shift outcomes makes society more agile.

The framework also implies the need for collective sensemaking. Since the situation is complex and unprecedented, ongoing dialog and information-sharing is necessary to adapt understanding.

How systems really work

Initiatives like scenario workshops, systems mapping exercises, and cross-sector collaborations are tools to build this collective foresight. But for these to work, we need the right assumptions. Systems mapping approaches can often proliferate increasingly complex diagrams of overlapping feedback loops and connecting points between a dizzying array of nodes. This doesn’t really illuminate the system, and can often obfuscate more than illuminate.

The planetary phase shift framework, instead, centres the necessity of attention to empirical detail and validation on the one hand, and transdisciplinary expertise which recognises the specific rules and properties of how particular sub-systems in different sectors operate – so that we can then assess the emergent dynamics of how they interact. We need to undertake a comprehensive integration of theoretical and empirical evidence as part of a new research programme to understand the dynamics of the planetary phase shift and its diverse implications.

One concrete application of the planetary phase shift framework for collective intelligence is in creating “systems dashboards” for society. Imagine a dashboard that tracks metrics corresponding to each phase of the adaptive cycle and each major subsystem: e.g., energy return on investment (EROI) of primary energy (indicating how close we are to energy limits), global average temperature and extreme event frequency (climate stress), biodiversity intactness (biosphere health), inequality indices and trust indices (social cohesion), adoption rates of key technologies in foundational sectors. These could be synthesised into an overall “phase shift index” signaling how fast and in what direction we are moving. Such a tool could help the public and policymakers grasp abstract concepts like resilience or tipping points in concrete terms. It would also allow us to view metrics not in isolation but side by side to see the whole.

Education and narratives

The planetary phase shift can be a powerful narrative for the 21st century: it tells a story of where we came from (centuries of growth and extraction), where we are (in a crisis that is the old system breaking), and where we could go (collapse or breakthrough to a new mode of living). This kind of grand narrative can replace more dangerous or defeatist stories (e.g. extremist ideologies or pure apocalyptic fatalism) by giving meaning to the turmoil and a call to action. It resonates with many cultural stories of death and rebirth, but grounds it in scientific understanding. Communicating this effectively can empower citizens, especially youth, to channel anxiety into constructive action – seeing themselves as potential agents in the reorganisation phase, not just victims of collapse.

Further Research

Ultimately, there’s a lot of inherent uncertainty in how exactly the planetary phase shift will unfold and what the next system will look like – many “sub-scenarios” are possible. Further rigorous work is needed to flesh out specific transition pathways, technological options, policy interventions, and sociocultural shifts.

Due to the sheer complexity of the variables at stake, meaningfully modelling the planetary phase shift in a quantitative way is a challenge that would be difficult to capture even by many of the most robust World-Earth models that couple human and earth systems.

There’s also the question of timescale: We are seeing rapid changes underway, but it’s unclear what the long-run implications will be. Are we talking about collapse over decades, or a drawn-out transformation over a century? Historical cycles suggest a collapse can take decades (the Western Roman Empire took 300 years to fully transform). It’s possible the phase shift will stretch across the 21st century with periods of acute crisis and periods of partial stability. And there remain questions around howe should choose to transition – do we want to maximise certain technologies or limit them; do we want to accelerate material throughout and growth or taper it off? Are these even valid questions? These are debates to be had within the framework.

Paradigm Shift

By weaving together theoretical insights from complex systems science with extensive empirical analysis of energy, climate, and political events, the planetary phase shift framework offers a coherent narrative: Industrial civilisation has overshot its support capacities and is undergoing an adaptive cycle collapse, out of which a new form of civilisation may emerge.

The early work in A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization identified the convergence of crises and the necessity for a post-carbon paradigm shift. Failing States, Collapsing Systems added empirical granularity and a sharper focus on how environmental limits are translating into social upheaval and violence, confirming that the global crisis is unfolding in real time and highlighting feedback loops that can trap us in a vicious cycle. Finally, the planetary phase shift theory crystallizes these ideas into an overarching systems framework encompassing both the material and cultural dimensions of human civilisation, aligning the human trajectory with the laws of ecology and thermodynamics, and urging a deliberate, intelligent navigation of the coming chaos towards a more sustainable and equitable order.

This integrated framework is more than an academic diagnosis; it is a call to action at a civilisational scale. It tells us that business-as-usual is no longer an option, that piecemeal reforms are insufficient – we face a choice between coordinating a great transformation or suffering a great collapse. It also tells us that amidst the danger, there is unprecedented opportunity: the possibility to reinvent how we live on Earth in harmony with nature and each other, using the accumulated knowledge and technology gained in the industrial age to create a post-carbon civilisation that is more prosperous in human terms (well-being, community, creativity) even if it consumes less material throughput. Post-carbon civilisation is not about going “backwards” to primitivism, but “a step forwards” beyond the constraints of the industrial-era mindset.

To achieve this, the planetary phase shift framework implores us to embed a systems mindset at all scales, at the heart of every organisation and institution. Every policy, every project must be evaluated in terms of how it affects the whole system’s evolution – does it increase resilience for the transition? Does it foster equity and cooperation (key for a stable reorganisation) or exacerbate tensions? Are we investing in the future (renewables, education, ecosystem restoration) or in the past (fossil fuels, arms races, excessive material consumption)? At the same time, we must remain adaptive and learn as we go, because complex systems can surprise us. In practical terms, that means scenario planning, stress tests, and flexible strategies rather than rigid plans. It also means nurturing networks of trust and knowledge-sharing globally, as no country or community can do it alone.

Perhaps the most profound shift needed is one of values and narratives. If enough people and leaders internalise the reality of the planetary phase shift, the focus can move from clinging to a failing status quo to collectively designing the next stage of civilisation. “Acceptance of the inevitability” of the end of the old allows us “to prepare ourselves… for what can be understood as the coming Post-Carbon Revolution.” This preparation is not merely technical, but philosophical, cultural, ethical, political, economic and technological  – a whole systems endeavour.

The planetary phase shift is already underway; the task now is to navigate it wisely – to save civilisation not by preserving an unsustainable system, but by midwifing the birth of a new one. This is both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity of our time.

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