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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. Carbon Shift brings together six of Canada’s world-class experts to explore where we stand now and where we might be headed. It investigates the economics, geology, politics, and science of the predicament we find ourselves in. And it gives each expert the chance to address what he thinks are the most important facets of the complex problems before us. 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. Today’s converging energy, environmental, and political-economic stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order. Yet there are things we can do now to keep such a breakdown from being catastrophic. And some kinds of breakdown could even open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies, if we’re prepared to exploit these opportunities when they arise. Learn more »

The Ingenuity Gap asks, is our world becoming too complex, too fast-paced to manage? The challenges facing us — ranging from international financial crises and global climate change to pandemics of tuberculosis and AIDS — converge, intertwine, and remain largely beyond our ken. Most of us suspect the experts don’t really know what’s going on; that as a species we’ve released forces that are neither managed not manageable. We are fast approaching a time when we may no longer be able to control a world that increasingly exceeds our grasp. This is “the ingenuity gap” — the critical gap between our need for practical, innovative ideas to solve complex 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 »

Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources — such as cropland, fresh water, and forests — and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Learn more »