If you want peace, prepare for war – an ancient lesson Canada must remember
March 21, 2025
Thomas Homer-Dixon warns Canadians to prepare for the possibility that Mr. Trump may make demands for territory, backed by the threat of military force.
Articles
Trump redux: Why the returning president is likely to become one of history’s most consequential figures
January 17, 2025
Thomas Homer-Dixon warns that as “reconfigurer-in-chief,” Donald Trump will be, in philosopher Georg Hegel’s terms, a world-historical figure.
Key to Canada’s growth? Recall the role of public money in developing Alberta oil
October 4, 2024
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Emily Smejkal, and Peter Massie
Canada faces two deep-seated, increasingly debilitating economic weaknesses: chronically low productivity growth and a lagging transition away from carbon-based energy sources. Both arise from our poor performance harnessing technological innovation.
Why so much is going wrong at the same time
October 18, 2023
Lots of things are going wrong. Does that make it a polycrisis?
Earth’s Polycrisis Is No Mere Illusion
February 18, 2023
Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Lawrence, and Scott Janzwood
The backlash against the “polycrisis” neologism is well under way. But the polycrisis idea can motivate urgent scientific investigation into the architecture of global crisis interaction.
What Happens When a Cascade of Crises Collide?
November 13, 2022
Thomas Homer-Dixon and Johan Rockström
Humanity faces a complex knot of seemingly distinct but entangled crises that are causing damage greater than the sum of their individual harms.
Putin isn’t bluffing about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine
September 26, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin is forcing the West to play a dangerous game of chicken, and he’s about to throw his steering wheel out the window.
A big bet on geothermal could help prevent a climate catastrophe
May 27, 2022
Directly under our feet, there’s enough heat emanating from the planet’s core to satisfy humanity’s future zero-carbon electricity needs thousands of times over.
Two things the West must do to lower the probability that Putin will pull the nuclear trigger
March 10, 2022
This time, ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ might not work. The Russian leader has already shown extreme irrationality in his calamitous choice to start this war.
States of Emergency
December 31, 2021
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. How should Canada prepare?