Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future argues that the crises of climate change and peaking oil production are really one: a carbon problem. The book brings together six world-class experts to explore where we stand now and where we might be headed. Learn more »
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization sets out a theory of the growth, crisis, and renewal of societies. Some kinds of crisis can open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies, if we’re prepared to exploit these opportunities when they arise. Learn more »
Is our world becoming too complex and too fast-paced to manage? The Ingenuity Gap argues that a dangerous gulf is opening between our need for practical, innovative ideas to solve our increasingly difficult problems and our actual supply of those ideas. Learn more »
Environment, Scarcity, and Violence shows how scarcities of critical renewable resources like cropland, fresh water, and forests will contribute to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence in poor countries. Learn more »
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Displaying 10 of 182 results for: Climate Change
A speech to a conference in Essen, Germany. I’m delighted to be here with you this evening, in part because this is my first visit to the Ruhr. This region has an extraordinary history as a crucible of an industrial revolution that was, of course, powered by coal. And coal is a substance that will [...]
On June 8, 2009, I gave a speech to a conference in Essen, Germany on “The Great Transformation: Climate Change as Cultural Change,” in which I identified the cognitive, economic, political, and normative components of the coming cultural transformation arising from climate change.
On June 8, 2009, I gave a speech to a conference in Essen, Germany on “The Great Transformation: Climate Change as Cultural Change,” in which I identified the cognitive, economic, political, and normative components of the coming cultural transformation arising from climate change.
Nature Review of Vaclav Smil’s “Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years” and Chris Patten’s “What Next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century“ …opinion-makers must demonstrate a better grasp of how societies rise and fall if they are to steer nations successfully through many of this century’s major crises. These are bewildering times. One moment the [...]
Canadian policy makers should shift their attention and resources commensurately. While policymakers, wedded to an outmoded worldview, fret about what Arctic climate change might do to national power directly in the basin, human wellbeing could be devastated around the world by cascading consequences of shifts in the Arctic’s energy balance. Ironically, these changes could – in the end – do far more damage to state-centric world order and even to states’ narrowly defined interests than any interstate conflicts we might see happen in the newly blue waters of the Arctic.
The important thing is to get scientists, environmentalists and global-warming skeptics alike out of the nonsensical all-or-nothing dichotomy that characterizes much current thinking about geo-engineering — that we either do it full scale, or we don’t do it at all. While we should all hope that we never need to play God with the earth’s climate, we must also have the best science at hand to do what might be necessary if melting polar ice leads to a far more dangerous future.
Talk given at Green Enterprise Toronto A consensus is emerging among climate scientists that the world needs to move to as quickly as possible to zero carbon emissions. The rate of ramp down to zero will depend, in large part, on the perceived urgency of the climate crisis. Steeper rates of decline will require more [...]
Modern capitalist markets are among the most amazing institutions humankind has ever created. They are mighty engines of innovation and wealth. They allow societies to quickly adapt to a world full of disruptions and surprises. And by linking billions of producers and consumers every day, they generate price signals that help people around the world decide what to make and what to buy.
But when it comes to conserving Earth’s natural environment, our markets are badly broken. For our planet’s future – and for our future prosperity – we must fix them.
Closing keynote address to the Canadian International Council 2008 National Foreign Policy Conference, Toronto When I started to think about this presentation, I looked through the material I had for the conference program, and this was the title of the session originally: ‘Energy and Climate Change: Are radical measures necessary?’ But when I went onto [...]
Homer-Dixon says a carbon surge threatens the world, breaking IPCC predictions. He outlines the latest science, and makes an odd suggestion of how the Internet might help save us.
