Thomas Homer-Dixon

hen the price of carbon reaches $100 a tonne, then it will become an economically viable business proposition to start taking COâ‚‚…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“As ingenuity gaps widen the gulfs of wealth and power among us, we need imagination, metaphor and empathy more than ever, to…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

Our marvelous new information technologies boost our power and opportunities for political engagement, but they can also disempower us by contributing to…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Conventional economics is the dominant intellectual rationalization of today’s world order. As we’ve overextended the growth phase of our global adaptive cycle,…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“As I looked over this curious document, I was particularly struck by a band of text across the bottom. It bore the…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“We can see how our world is, in many ways, becoming more complex, fast-paced, and unpredictable. As a result, the problems we…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Today’s overwhelming volume and variety of information makes it possible—by selecting and connecting data points carefully—to paint practically any picture of the…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Writing and repairing software generally takes far more time and is far more expensive than initially anticipated. “Every feature that is added…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“The result is a dangerous lag between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The natural sciences and the technologies they spawn…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“We might be excused our ignorance in this case, because ocean-atmosphere systems are, after all, almost inconceivably complex. Less easy to excuse…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“To support an adequate standard of living, humankind still needs huge quantities of wood and wood products, from planking and beams and…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

Bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“The combined activities of our enormous population are already producing breathtaking effects. Our planet is only 12,700 kilometers in diameter—about three times…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

“Some people argue that economics is an exception to this general story. Economics, they say, provides a much more analytically precise and…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon

New information technologies-including email, the web, and computerized blast-faxes and phone calls-have fundamentally changed the landscape of political competition in modern democracies.…

— Thomas Homer-Dixon