Converging Crises of the 21st Century

Over the past few years I have thought a lot about how there seems to be many global crises converging in the 21st century. A recent paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment got me thinking about this idea again (Cabrera et al. 2008). Many of these problems overlap and complicate each other and so it seems clear that we won’t be able to solve any of these problems without strategies that consider them all. It is frightening to consider a world with where these problems dominate our lives. But perhaps it will be worse if we don’t start thinking about them and just go about our lives hoping for the best. Here’s my list of crises:

1. Climate change
2. Continued human population growth
3. Loss of water resources
4. Loss of soil resources
5. End of oil/Peak oil
6. Collapse of fisheries
7. Resistance to antibiotics/New disease evolution
8. Proliferation of toxic chemicals
9. Mass extinctions/Biodiversity loss

Is there anything I am missing? I’ve done a little bit of searching but haven’t found very many similar lists. Cabrera et al. (2008) survey the faculty of Cornell using an idea they call “concept mapping” in an effort to find and prioritize our most pressing problems. They come up with most of the same crises that I do and a number of additional social and economic problems that are off of my radar like “Corporations have too much influence in governing,” “Global poverty and its effects,” and “The rise of fundamentalist religion” to name a few. Unlike my list, many of their issues are existing problems that we have been dealing with and we may never be rid like “the natural human tendency toward selfishness, self-centeredness, and greed.” They also point to a great lecture from the 1997 AAAS meeting which I had never read (Lubchenco 1998). This lecture is not so much about any specific crises but how we need to reposition science in order to confront problems which are a combination of social, economic, political, and environmental. The other obvious source for this kind of list is the World Watch Institute. This is their bread and butter. Every year they put out a book called State of the World which is scarier reading than any H. P. Lovecraft novel. Another place to look is The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It is slightly less academic but makes for better reading than a list of facts and figures like State of the World. I’m not sure I agree with everything about Kunstler’s perhaps overconfident vision of the future but it definitely worth contemplating.

Let me know if there is something you think must be added to the list above. I’m also interested in other websites, books, and articles which address what crises we will be facing in the future and how best to approach them.




Cabrera, Derek, James T Mandel, Jason P Andras, and Marie L Nydam. 2008. What is the crisis? Defining and prioritizing the world's most pressing problems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6, no. 9:469-475. doi:10.1890/070185.

Lubchenco, Jane. 1998. Entering the Century of the Environment: A New Social Contract for Science. Science 279, no. 5350 (January 23): 491-497. doi:10.1126/science.279.5350.491.