“Polycrisis” is a term popularized by Adam Tooze1 and characterized by a loss of control by the existing hierarchy2. Its where multiple crises come together simultaneously, for example the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine War with associated energy price increases, the inflationary period, and the climate crisis.
Tooze diagrams the current polycrisis3:
1.
Whiting, K. This Is Why “polycrisis” Is a Useful Way of Looking at the World Right Now. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/03/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/ (2023).
2.
Davies, D. The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How the World Lost Its Mind. (Profile Books Ltd, 2024).
3.
Tooze, A. Chartbook #130 Defining Polycrisis - from Crisis Pictures to the Crisis Matrix. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-130-defining-polycrisis (2022).