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.
On July 1, he will join the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada,
as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global
Systems.
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
Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future (Random House Canada, 2009)
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
Clean Coal? Go Underground, Alberta, Toronto Globe and Mail, May 4, 2009
The
Age of Cheap Oil is Ending Toronto Globe and Mail, August 6,
2007
The
End of Ingenuity, New York Times, OpEd, 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
Julio S. Friedmann)
Out of the Energy Box,
Foreign Affairs (September/October 2004) pp. 72-83 (with Julio S. Friedmann)
Climate Change,
Environmental Stress and Conflict
Responding to the Skeptics, The Globe and Mail, December 4, 2009
The Newest Science, Alternatives Journal, 2009
Enticements of Green Carrots, Toronto Globe and Mail, August 9, 2009
A
Swiftly Melting Planet, New York Times, OpEd, October 4,
2007
Terror
in the Weather Forecast, New York Times, Editorial / Opinion,
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, 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
Societal Collapse
When Wise Words are not Enough, Nature, March 19, 2009
MEDIA
To see an interview with Dr.
Homer-Dixon on Foreign Exchange, go to click here.
For more information
about Dr. Homer-Dixon's work, please go to www.homerdixon.com