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Remarks on the occasion of the naming of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

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Pierre Trudeau knew something about the devastation caused by war. As a young man in 1948, he traveled from London to see the convulsions of Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II. He saw the fighting that wracked the Middle East following the birth of Israel. He saw the madness of India’s partition and the chaos in Shanghai as the nationalist armies retreated before Mao’s onslaught. As he later wrote in his memoirs, “the route that I had chosen was strewn with obstacles created by armed conflicts of that time. It was incredible— everywhere I went seemed to be at war.”

Cold Truths About Global Warming

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By February, Canadians’ love of fresh snow and winter sports has given way to annoyance, as we shovel our driveways for the umpteenth time. This winter, we’ve had some particularly nasty weather. But far colder and much nastier winters could be in store for us, especially for eastern Canadians and perhaps very soon. The culprit, weirdly enough, could be global warming.

Of Human Fallout

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Remember the population bomb? This profound concern over exponential growth of the world’s population provided ample fodder for academic dispute and dinner conversation during the 1960s and 1970s. Commentators like Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich warned we would soon see famine, eco-catastrophe, and war as poor nations failed to cope with their surging birth rates. Yet these worries were swept from the popular imagination in the 1990s, when a less gloomy view prevailed: Yes, world population had grown dramatically, but birth rates were dropping practically everywhere. Many conservative commentators declared that the human population explosion was over. The real problem had become the impending global “birth dearth” or “population implosion.”

The Matrix of Our Troubles

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with Sarah Wolfe | One could draw a parallel between the sight of thousands walking north on Yonge Street and the mass exodus of people on foot from lower Manhattan two years ago. But yesterday’s electrical failure did not claim thousands of lives, nor will it trigger a cascade of events leading to war. Nevertheless, what we saw in Toronto was poignant for what it represented: a people too interlocked with their technical choices, too resolute on efficiency gains, and too dependent on progress. Last Thursday’s blackout should be a powerful catalyst for change.

Bringing Ingenuity to Energy

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Energy is our life-blood. Without an adequate supply at the right times and places, our economy and society would grind to a halt. Canadians are profligate users of energy: in fact, we have one of the highest per capita rates of consumption in the world. But if we were smarter about things, we would consume much less energy to support our current standard of living, and we would produce this energy with much less damage to our natural environment.

War: Which Way to Turn

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Should we go to war with Iraq? If you’re perplexed and confused by the issue, you’re not alone. In recent months, I’ve found my own opinion shifting from one side to the other, a picture of indecisiveness. Only recently have I made up my mind.

Exchange on Violent Environments

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ECSP invited Homer-Dixon, Peluso, and Watts to engage in a dialogue about how Violent Environments characterized Homer-Dixon’s work as well as the future of environmental security research.

Response to Baliunas et al.

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Complex issues like climate change are surrounded by a dense tangle of scientific theory and evidence that is difficult for any non-specialist to verify or understand. People can exploit this situation to tell very different stories about the issue. Because countless bits of evidence are available, it’s possible – by selecting and connecting the bits carefully – to construct practically any picture of the world and make it seem real.

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