Articles

Permafrost

Canada’s thawing permafrost should be raising alarm bells in the battle against climate change

June 11, 2021
Thomas Homer-Dixon and Duane Froese

Thomas Homer-Dixon and Duane Froese | Permafrost may seem tucked away in remote northern regions. But what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.

A mob egged on by U.S. President Donald Trump clashes with police at the west entrance of the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.

How the United States survived an assault on its democracy – at least for now

January 15, 2021
John Ibbitson and Thomas Homer-Dixon

The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol failed to make an autocrat out of Donald Trump, thanks in part to the public shields erected against his dangerous campaign of baseless election-fraud claims.

Commanding Hope

There May Yet Be Hope

November 15, 2020
Arno Kopecky

A review of Commanding Hope by the Literary Review of Canada

Coronavirus as portrayed by the CDC

Pandemic Log

September 10, 2020

A running commentary on the unfolding pandemic

The world seems dire. But we must not give up on hope

August 29, 2020

To believe in the possible and to make the possible real, we must recognize that the right kind of hope can be a tool of change, and we must give our hope the muscle it requires in our present crisis.

Hope has seen better days. But Thomas Homer-Dixon has written a book for ‘those who choose to fight’

August 29, 2020

The rising risk of nuclear war. Donald Trump’s 2016 election. Vast clouds of wildfire smoke. A global pandemic. These four things seem like apples and oranges, but they share one key similarity: each signals that something is going awry in the story of human progress.

Coronavirus will change the world. It might also lead to a better future

March 6, 2020

What’s happening in response to the worldwide spread of the SARS CoV-2 virus (and COVID-19, the disease it causes) is a vivid example of a global ‘tipping event,’ in which multiple social systems flip simultaneously to a distinctly new state.

The great Canadian climate delusion

June 1, 2018
Thomas Homer-Dixon and Yonatan Strauch

with Yonatan Strauch | Is Canada going to be the first country to break apart over the issue of climate change? That may seem like a hyperbolic question. But the fissures in our federation over climate and energy policy are now extraordinarily deep, and there’s little sign that they’ll close soon.

No . . . I did not say wind energy is ‘Idiot Power’

May 22, 2018

A poster widely circulated on the web highlights text that was purportedly written by me saying that wind power inevitably suffers an energetic deficit. The poster is fraudulent.

Alberta’s economic future in peril without shift away from fossil fuel

November 8, 2017

by Gordon Kent | Alberta needs to start shifting quickly out of the oilsands to avoid serious economic trouble as the world moves away from fossil fuels, a University of Waterloo professor says.