I was hoping to find this in the first paragraph or so, but ended up looking elsewhere -- hopefully this helps those who are as apparently unaware as I:<p>"A global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity's prospects. These interacting crises produce harms greater than the sum of those the crises would produce in isolation, were their host systems not so deeply interconnected"<p><a href="https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/what-is-a-global-polycrisis/#:~:text=A%20global%20polycrisis%20occurs%20when,systems%20not%20so%20deeply%20interconnected" rel="nofollow">https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/what-is-a-globa...</a>.
While I share the general concern about climate change, talk of population collapse in South Asia is all too familiar to be taken seriously at face value. In fact: life in South Asia has slowly been improving since Independence. Before independence, famines involving millions of deaths were common [1]. The one called "Chalisa Akaal" was particularly devastating. [2]<p>In the 75 years since independence from Britain, IIRC there has been only one major famine in either India, Bangladesh and Pakistan taken together, the 1970 famine in Bangladesh just prior to the 1971 war. Green revolution has been a great boon.<p>Doom and gloom about an overpopulated South Asia is common. On the other hand, perhaps the reason why the region is so populated is that it has historically been very conducive for human habitation even using very low technology.<p>Where I believe most predictions have got it wrong is the ability of humans to adapt. I hope with John McCarthy, that science and sense will be able to overcome such dire crises. [3]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalisa_famine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalisa_famine</a><p>[3] <a href="http://jmc.stanford.edu/commentary/progress/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://jmc.stanford.edu/commentary/progress/index.html</a>
Let's also not forget that the Indian subcontinent will be too hot to feasibly live in in the next 50 to 100 years. As someone who came from there, there is no way I'd go back to live in India given that fact alone, not to even mention any others.
> And India’s steps to secure its food supplies by limiting first wheat and sugar and now rice exports have sent shock waves through the global food economy.<p>I wonder if the farm reforms which was later revoked could have made it much easier for India to handle the food crisis. It was one of the most significant reforms enacted, but Modi was forced to back down. But looks like there'll be no choice left but to push it through if the situation worsens.
Crisis in India & China could be the deciding factors for a polycrisis.
People can easily sideline the weightage of this factor, by pointing to their low per capita GDP when compared to other western & developed countries.
Covid has shown that if factories in China are closed while the world is open, theb there would be inflation across the world because of decrease in supply. The fuel to this fire of inflation would be food export bans from countries like India, which have more than a billion to feed first and additonaly war in countries like Ukraine and Russia, further impacting food production / logistics around it.
It's annoying how the rhetorical "one third of Pakistan underwater" has been repeated as fact even though a quick glance at a topological map shows that to be impossible for values of "underwater" that mean "comes up to your ankles at least".
Industry is shutting down all over Europe [1] but no-one yet talks about a "poly-crisis" around these parts, it's like we're sleepwalkers, all it's fine as longs as we don't actively talk about it. And who-ever protests the causes behind it is labeled as a left-winger or right-winger (or both at the same time), and called an ally of Putin.<p>I had expected Tooze to also write about it, after all the book that made him famous, <i>The Wages of Destruction</i> [2] (which I heartily recommend, I've just finished reading it), touched heavily on the Nazis' quest for energy resources. This time around Europe decided to cut itself off from said energy resources out of its own volition, never read of anything like that happening before in the context of a war.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/business/europe-energy-crisis-factories.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/business/europe-energy-cr...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction</a>
the petro-dollar system really screws energy importers - an interest rate hike from the Fed is an economic Godzilla, a random event which turns up to casually destroy the entire country
China has been going through something similar. The river is drying up due to no rain. Electricity black outs has forced factories to shut down by government decree.