Resources

Climate Change’s Costs Hit the Plate

July 24, 2012

In the mid-1980s, when I was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and beginning to study climate change, I attended a lecture by a specialist in plant physiology at nearby Harvard University. He spoke about global warming’s impact on crop productivity. He was quite optimistic. More carbon dioxide in the air, he explained, causes certain kinds of plants to grow faster. So, on balance, food output should rise in a warmer and CO2-rich world.

How Free Is Academic Freedom?

May 14, 2012

Canada desperately needs a broad and vigorous public discussion about why academic freedom is important, what might threaten it and how it should be protected.

Catastrophic Dehumanization: the Psychological Dynamics of Severe Conflict

April 17, 2012

Dehumanization is arguably a defining feature of the most brutal acts of human violence, such as saturation bombardment of civilian populations, terrorist attacks on urban centers, intense battlefield combat, and genocide.

All’s Not Lost, Ontario. The Future Is Green, Not Black

April 7, 2012

Ontario, we’re told, is Canada’s new rust belt. The high dollar is pummelling the province’s exports. Big manufacturers are fleeing. The Liberal government is slashing spending to maintain the province’s credit rating.

Our Peak Oil Premium

February 1, 2012

Humankind will have to invest staggering resources to find and produce new oil if global output is to grow steadily. We’re likely much closer to the tipping point than optimists think

Detecting and Coping with Disruptive Shocks in Arctic Marine Systems: A Resilience Approach to Place and People

January 22, 2012
Eddy Carmack, Thomas Homer-Dixon, et al

It seems inevitable that the ongoing and rapid changes in the physical environment of the marine Arctic will push components of the region’s existing social-ecological systems—small and large—beyond tipping points and into new regimes.

We’re Losing Our Past to Technology

December 24, 2011

A few weeks ago, as I was rummaging in a drawer in my father’s house, I came across a dozen reels of developed 8-millimetre film. I’d known the reels were in the house somewhere. But, for many years, I’d resolutely put the fact out of my mind.

Climate Summit Was a Pathetic Exercise in Deceit

December 12, 2011

There’s really only one label for the pathetic exercise we’ve just witnessed in South Africa: deceit. The whole climate-change negotiation process and the larger political discourse surrounding this horrible problem is a drawn-out and elaborate exercise in lying—to each other, to ourselves, and especially to our children. And the lies are starting to corrupt our civilization from inside out.

Tipping Toward Sustainability: Emerging Pathways of Transformation

October 6, 2011
Frances Westley, Thomas Homer-Dixon, et al

This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and largescale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse the trends that are challenging critical thresholds and creating tipping points in the earth system, and if not, what conditions are necessary to escape the current lock-in.

Our Fukushima Moment

March 18, 2011

A quarter of a century after we first heard it, the word “Chernobyl” stands in our minds for technological calamity borne of incompetence. Environmentalists used the label to deliver a near-fatal blow to the nuclear power industry. What will Fukushima mean to us in 2036, and how will we have used the label to change our world?

Scroll to Top