A periodic thinkletter to help you better understand and anticipate the global polycrisis, so you can adapt. Compiled by Christopher H. CORDEY, a futurist-maieutician, strategic facilitator, international speaker. Founder of Futuratinow and prosilience. Partner at Yonders. Board member at Swissfuture. Co-founder www.terracognita2089.space
Thinkletter #63 - February 17, 2025
Dear readers,
What if the future has already happened? What if we are not heading toward collapse but are already living through it - too slow to register, too systemic to resist? The world we assumed would continue indefinitely - built on abundant energy, stable ecosystems, and functional institutions - has already passed its peak. What remains is inertia, denial, and a refusal to ask the hardest question: What comes after progress?
The depletion of net energy is not a distant problem but a present reality. Every new wave of economic growth is a Ponzi scheme, feeding on the remnants of past abundance. Climate collapse is not a threat but a condition. Institutions are not failing to act - they were never designed for this.
Yet the dominant response is more of the same: innovation dreams, green capitalism, policy tweaks. But what if these aren’t solutions at all? What if the real challenge is not saving the system but accepting that it cannot be saved?
We have long told ourselves that history bends toward progress. But what if that story is over? What if the greatest challenge now is not how to extend an unsustainable civilization, but how to live with clarity in a world beyond its promises? Then what?
Are we at another Axial Age moment ?
For our paid member, this month, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Louis Arnoux, CEO of the Cool Planet Foundation and Fourth Transition Initiative as the main contibutor to this thinkletter.
Louis states that The Future was yesterday and answers the following question What’s next then?
