The director of a new academic research institute at British Columbia's Royal Roads University says the COVID-19 crisis has the world at a global tipping point.
Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon says the pandemic is an event that challenges social, political, economic and environmental structures that can fall like dominos or radically shift to new paths amid such a crisis.
Homer-Dixon, a researcher and author, was introduced today as the director of the Victoria-area university's new Cascade Institute.
University president Philip Steenkamp says the institute will bring together research leaders to address challenging issues facing the world, which include the pandemic, climate change and economic inequality.
Homer-Dixon says the institute will examine issues connected to the pandemic in microscopic detail, while also taking longer telescopic view to the future.
He says he sees the institute proposing points of intervention that governments, corporations, industries and academic institutions can consider and apply to face such tipping-point challenges.
