Fig. 1: The 2008 global food and energy crisis.

This figure depicts (on the left-hand side) long term simultaneous stresses (SS) which have built up over time. It also depicts long-fuse big bang (LFBB) processes, which represent the accumulation of stresses within systems until the systems’ coping capacity is exceeded (system overload), resulting in a sudden, non-linear shift in system behaviour. In the energy system, EROI is energy return on investment, which is the ratio of the energy output from an energy resource to the energy input to obtain that output. The figure shows how long-term stresses in food and energy systems have led to the overload of these systems. It also depicts the interaction between these systems (through the transmission channels of energy input into food prices and of biofuel output from cropland into energy systems) that effectively coupled these systems together. The food system, in its overloaded state, was susceptible to the trigger of the Australian drought, depicted in the middle of the figure, leading to a food price surge. As depicted on the right-hand side of the figure, this food price surge was compounded by a gas price surge from the overloaded energy system, exacerbating the resultant global food crisis. This crisis in turn had multisystemic knock-on effects (in a ramifying cascade—RC), including widespread political instability. The ‘X’ symbol depicts compounding stresses (on the left-hand side) and crises (on the right-hand side). Adapted from: Homer-Dixon et al.³⁵. Synchronous failure: the emerging causal architecture of global crisis. Ecology and Society, 20(3). https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss3/art6/³⁵—licensed under CC BY 4.0.