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How the oil sands industry is distorting Canada’s economy
Posted by Globe and Mail: Thomas Homer-Dixon on June 1st, 2013
Globe and Mail: By 2030, Canada's output from the oil sands will reach about five million barrels a day, more than twice today's output. Yet, by 2030, chances are also good that the world will have placed a price on carbon emissions to spur energy innovation and wean humanity off carbon-based fuels. By then, climate change's impact on global food security will have become starkly obvious. Already, heat waves and droughts in major grain-producing regions have caused food-price shocks and political unrest around the...
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Climate change’s costs hit the plate
Posted by Globe and Mail: Thomas Homer-Dixon on July 24th, 2012
Globe and Mail: In the mid-1980s, when I was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and beginning to study climate change, I attended a lecture by a specialist in plant physiology at nearby Harvard University. He spoke about global warming's impact on crop productivity. He was quite optimistic. More carbon dioxide in the air, he explained, causes certain kinds of plants to grow faster. So, on balance, food output should rise in a warmer and CO2-rich world.
I chased him down after the...