Lyceum Agency
Address
Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon
Energy & Security Expert  Political Scientist  Author

Thomas Homer-Dixon—an award-winning author and teacher—helps his audiences understand how our world is changing. In simple, clear language he shows how challenges such as global warming, energy scarcity, economic instability, and infoglut affect people, companies, and societies.  And he explains what we can all do to adapt and prosper in a world of ever-greater complexity, speed, and surprise.

 

Dr. Homer-Dixon is one of the world’s leading experts on the intricate links between nature, technology, and society.  Born in Victoria, British Columbia, he received a BA from Carleton University in Ottawa and a PhD from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts—where he studied international relations, defense and arms control policy, cognitive science, and conflict theory.  Today, he holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto

 

His research focuses on threats to global security in the 21st century and on how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change.  He is particularly interested in the relationship between climate change, world energy consumption, and violent conflict, and in how we can use the Internet to promote democratic problem solving.

 

Thomas Homer-Dixon is one of the few people on the planet who could have tackled what he defines as the world’s overriding issue: the yawning ‘ingenuity’ gap between the need for practical solutions to complex problems, from global warming to Third World poverty, and the actual supply of workable ideas.         —Maclean’s

 

His most recent book, The Upside of Down:  Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, was an immediate #1 best-seller in Canada, a Globe and Mail top 100 pick, and the winner of the 2006 National Business Book Award.  His previous book, The Ingenuity Gap, won the 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Non-fiction.  His first book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, won the Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.

 

As one of Canada’s foremost public intellectuals, Dr. Homer-Dixon writes regularly for the Toronto Globe and Mail and the New York Times.  He has also written for the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the International Herald Tribune.  His widely cited scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals, including International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and Population and Development Review.

 

Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?                      —Thomas Homer-Dixon

 

He has been invited to speak about his ideas and research at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Cornell Universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, West Point, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

 

Dr. Homer-Dixon has provided briefings to the Privy Council Office, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Department of Defense in Canada; and to the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the National Intelligence Council, the State Department,  the Agency for International Development, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.

 

Lecture Topics

  • Energy, society, and economic change
  • Climate change and society
  • Leadership in a world of complexity, speed, and surprise
  • Building resilient organizations, cities, and societies
  • Threats to international security in the 21st century, including terrorism
  • Education for a new world
  • The ingenuity gap
  • The challenges of rising complexity

 

Books

The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Island Press, 2006)

The Ingenuity Gap (Vintage Books, 2002)

Environment, Scarcity and Violence (Princeton University Press, 2001)

Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security, edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Jessica Blitt ( Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,1998)

 

SELECTED ARTICLES

Energy

The Age of Cheap Oil is Ending Toronto Globe and Mail, Monday, August 6, 2007

The End of Ingenuity, New York Times, OpEd, Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Caught Up in Our Own Connections, New York Times, OpEd, August 13, 2005

Coal in a Nice Shade of Green, New York Times, OpEd, Mar 25, 2005 (with Friedmann, Julio S.)

Out of the Energy Box, Foreign Affairs (September/October 2004) pp. 72-83 (with Friedmann, Julio S.)

 

Climate Change, Environmental Stress and Conflict

A Swiftly Melting Planet, New York Times, OpEd, Thursday, October 4, 2007

Terror in the Weather Forecast, New York Times, Editorial / Opinion, Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Cold Truths about Global Warming, Toronto Globe and Mail, February 16, 2004

 

Terrorism and War

Pull up Terrorism by the Roots, Toronto Globe and Mail, Monday, September 11, 2006

The Rise of Complex Terrorism, Foreign Policy, January/February 2002

Why Root Causes are Important (Published title: We Ignore Misery at Our Peril), Toronto Globe and Mail, September 26, 2001

The Virulence of Violence: Small Arms, Many Wars, Large Threat, Washington Post, February 4, 2001

 

To see a video clip of Dr. Homer-Dixon, go to http://www.homerdixon.com/talksspeeches.html

 

To see an interview with Dr. Homer-Dixon on Foreign Exchange, go to http://foreignexchange.tv/?q=node/1791

 

For more information about Dr. Homer-Dixon's work, please go to www.homerdixon.com

 

 






Governments everywhere, from his native Canada to the UK, pay attention to [Homer-Dixon] because the kites he flies are less prone to crashing than most. So his latest book, The Upside of Down, is likely to be read by policy wonks and worried individuals alike. It's a wake-up call for millions feeling overwhelmed by an unrelieved diet of disaster."

- Ehsan Masood, The New Scientist

 

 

Thomas Homer-Dixon [is] one of the best-informed and most brilliant writers on global affairs today.


-Dylan Evans, The Guardian




Ingenuity Gap


This remarkable work, based on an impressive amount of scholarship, travel, and interviews, is the most persuasive forecast of the twenty-first century I have seen.

 

Edward O. Wilson

Harvard University

 

 

Closely reasoned, accessible and lucid....A welcome reality check.

 

Washington Post Book World

 

 

No other new concept...so fully

condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization as does 'ingenuity gap.' [Homer-Dixon] is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.

 

Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Coming Anarchy

 

 

Remarkable...compelling, original....This book's intellectual scope is swe

eping.

 

The Memphis Commercial Appeal

 

 

Homer-Dixon explores how the soaring complexities of our world create monumental challenges for our institutions and governm

ents. This is a powerful book — an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual journey to find answers to some of the most pressing problems of our time.

 

Senator Timothy E. Wirth, President

The United Nations Foundation