Title: Climate and Financial Futures
Approx. Reading Time: 8 minutes
Author: Peter Kingsley
Five years ago, the ‘inevitable policy response’ narrative on dangerous climate risk had momentum. The narrative ran that, in the face of increasingly extreme climate events and overwhelming evidence, large-scale state interventions were a question not of ‘if’, but of ‘when’. Since then, wars and chaotic changes in the world order have dominated the landscape. Peter Kingsley asks what happens when some regions and cities recognise they will become uninhabitable and uninsurable, and when investment confidence amongst ultimate asset owners, private capital and states collapses?
Read EssayFrom the archive: Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 short story Garden of Forking Pathsmay seem an unusual metaphor for state-of-the-art approaches to simulating and navigating complex systems in 2023, but the story has credentials. Borges echoed Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and both foreshadowed the ‘many worlds’ theories and the recent ‘simulation’ model of neuroscience that explains the realities of human experience and how we think about the future.
The current geopolitical moment is what statisticians call a “structural break”. It is rendering the forecasting models used by central banks, financial institutions and specialised firms largely useless. How should decision makers adjust to the global hegemon, predominant economic power and holder of the global reserve currency generating so much uncertainty?
Financial markets may not force the Trump administration to adopt a responsible economic policy agenda. Nor can the US economy flourish irrespective of the direction of the country’s politics. Many of its economic strengths are the product of political decisions and institutions that are now under threat. As a result, the days of US outperformance could be numbered.
According to the latest neuroscientific research, humans create models of the world and then scan for sources of shock. We are fine-tuned to minimise surprise and uncertainty. We simulate possible futures. There is, however, a fundamental problem. What works for individuals does not work at larger scales. This matters: the greatest challenges to humanity are global and collective. Unless and until we imagine new models, we face ever-increasing uncertainty.
Title: Renaissance: towards 2050
Approx. Reading Time: 31 minutes
Author: Peter Kingsley, Simon Tilford
Picture this: January 2050. Peter Kingsley and Simon Tilford invite us to look back—to 2028, to the moment when, after years of crisis, the focus on long-term resilience and regeneration of the natural world gained momentum. To a time that marked the beginning of mass-scale global action to reverse the decades of industrial destruction and the ecological disasters that followed. Global humanitarian values began to shape agendas as mass-migration became irreversible. Hope was in the air after years of relentless crises, trade wars and military conflict. Climate populism, legal activism and cultural convergence focused on the transformation of natural habitats and have reshaped global politics, economies, technology and finance. In just one generation, the world’s geostrategic and environmental landscape is now transformed.
Read EssayTitle: Walled Gardens: towards 2050
Approx. Reading Time: 36 minutes
January 2050. Peter Kingsley and Simon Tilfordinvite us to look back. Survey a world of patchwork, environmentally secure post-industrial walled gardens. Secure borders for some, mass-migration and survival conditions for others. The climate and biosphere crises had global causes, but hyper-local solutions. The long political backlash against globalisation shaped the emergence of isolationism, protectionism and state power. What remains of trade is in ideas: digital, virtual, fragmented.
Read EssayTitle: Dark Ages: towards 2050
Approx. Reading Time: 46 minutes
Author: Peter Kingsley, Simon Tilford
Scenarios are models. They describe alternative possible futures. At their best, they explore extremes, because history tells us one thing about the future: failure of imagination is a primary source of risk and catastrophic failure. In this update of Dark Ages, one of our reference scenarios, Peter Kingsley and Simon Tilford explore a descent into chaos, a story of climate and biosphere collapse, war, state failures, economic crisis, mass migration and humanitarian disasters. A story of sleepwalking world leaders. Too little, too late. Like Orwell’s 1984, it serves as a warning, not a prediction. This story has momentum. Is this the world we want?
Read EssayTitle: Dark Ages: Descent into Chaos
Approx. Reading Time: 11 minutes
Author: Peter Kingsley, Simon Tilford
In this new, updated introduction to Dark Ages—one of our three long-standing reference scenarios—Peter Kingsley and Simon Tilford explore how the world could face cascading geostrategic and socio-economic failures. It is 2030. Trade wars, land grabs, climate dislocation and financial crises have triggered a deep global slump. Unregulated AI has supercharged misinformation, fuelling culture wars and further eroding political legitimacy. No power is able to take on the hegemonic role ceded by the United States. Politics are nationalistic and zero-sum, precluding agreement on international rules to keep markets open and enforce regulatory standards. Finance and business have been forced back behind national and regional borders.
Read EssayThe UK’s Advanced Research Agency (ARIA) has announced a major investment in early warning systems for climate tipping points. Such systems could spur the rapid decarbonisation needed, but with global temperatures breaching 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels sooner than expected, it is probably too late to prevent some tipping points being triggered. As a result, early warning systems also have an essential role to play in enabling preparation for the worst.
Trump’s destructive and hostile policies are galvanising Europe, prompting claims that the euro could challenge the dollar as the world’s reserve asset. However, for this to happen the eurozone would need to integrate fiscally as well as become a net capital importer, which implies running a trade deficit. This could happen, but probably not quickly.
Institutional risk assessments are grossly under-estimating climate risk. The world is on a trajectory for over 3°C of warming, yet many assessments assume this will have a negligible effect on economic growth and asset values. This is creating a ‘delayed disclosure trap’—the disincentive to disclose high climate risks leads to less action, so the underlying risk grows. Breaking the trap can only be achieved by defending first movers.
American businesses face the conundrum of collective action. The second Trump administration is likely to end badly for many of them—as well as the entire US—but no leader dares speak up. The longer they remain silent, the more damage could be done to the institutions of US democracy, and the harder and riskier it will be for them to push back.
In the recent US election, there was a 16-point difference in voting behaviour between young men and women, with men under 30 backing Trump by 56 percent compared to just 40 percent of women the same age. No other age group had such a pronounced “gender gap” in their voting behaviour. Other countries are seeing similar trends. The societal implications could be far-reaching.
The liberal media and the courts are the only ones hitting back against the Trump administration. The Democrats have yet to recover their footing. There has been some bipartisan pushback against his U-turn on Ukraine and embrace of Putin, but not as much as would have been expected given the ramifications. Nevertheless, Trump faces mounting challenges. Economics could be his downfall.
Three years after the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a cessation of hostilities is in sight—prompted by Donald Trump’s determination to relieve the financial burden of US military aid by seeking a quick end to the conflict. As negotiations start in earnest between Russia and the US, Vladimir Putin must decide how long he wants to keep fighting.
The phrase ‘decoupling from the US’ rolls off the tongue easily. In reality, it is more complex, involving what economists call a “fallacy of composition”. It may be possible for one or even a few countries to shift some trade away from the US, but very difficult for all to do so simultaneously due to the country’s centrality to the global economy and the exceptional role of the US consumer.
In its 55 years of existence, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos has never seen one single individual dominating discussions like Donald Trump did this year. Even though the US President wasn’t there in person, it was all about him. His deregulatory agenda was feted by business leaders, but what he envisages is the law of the jungle, where the big end up eating the small. This promises further fragmentation and chaos.
While the January 2025 LA wildfires were exceptional in their speed and severity, less attention has been paid to an important political dynamic: how the failure to protect communities through adaptation and emergency response can increase support for political parties that seek to curtail climate action. As such, the ability to spur decarbonisation and tackle the causes of climate change could become increasingly dependent on whether political leaders are also perceived as capable in responding to its consequences.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a primary global power battlefield. The landscape is defined by ever-greater momentum, conflicting signals and turbulence, as the recent emergence of DeepSeek and the collapse of US share prices illustrate. The deep-seated tensions between ‘AI for good’ and what some experts see as existential risks posed by unregulated AI, social media, quantum computing and Big Tech, led by the US, are polarising governments, academic experts, corporate leaders and financial markets.
For some, the election of Donald Trump highlights the need for the UK to rejoin the EU as quickly as possible. For others, it’s an opportunity for Britain to carve out a privileged relationship with a booming US. For their part, British voters increasingly want closer EU ties, but they are largely being ignored by the country’s politicians. The risk is that the UK ends up with worst of all worlds.
The consequences of climate change are weakening societies’ abilities to respond to its causes and impact, leading to ‘derailment risk’. Adaptation is sometimes misconstrued as coming at the cost of addressing the underlying problem—mitigation. However, as climate consequences escalate, adaptation will be an essential enabler of mitigation: more resilient and cohesive societies will be better able to see out the transition, no matter what climate change throws their way.
France’s political tumult is already affecting its economy, exacerbating the country’s divisions: a vicious circle. Germany, the other motor of European integration, also faces a deepening economic stagnation. This comes at a crucial time for the European Union, as it faces Russia’s determination to upend the current security order and Donald Trump’s return to power in the US. Crisis could prove a catalyst for change, but it could also be a precursor of worse to come.
Donald Trump doesn’t think of the world in terms of a grand strategy. Rather, he combines an unpredictable and disruptive leadership style and a transactional approach to allies and adversaries alike. His electoral victory heralds a new era for European security. Unless Europeans can step up and take on much of the role currently undertaken by the US, the region could face growing uncertainty and conflict.
In early 2023, not for the first time, we made the case that inter-systemic risk would become the defining characteristic of the future political and geostrategic landscape. World leaders would be overwhelmed by complexity, radical uncertainty and bewildering rates of change. The impacts of the incoming Trump administration and the influence of the ‘libertarian right’ cannot be understood in conventional risk and opportunity terms, or as the sum of individual policies.
