Simon Dalby (academic)

For the Danish cyclist, see Simon Dalby (cyclist).

Simon Dalby
Occupation(s)	Academic and an author
Academic background
Education	B.A. Geography M.A. Geography Ph.D. Geography
Alma mater	University of Dublin University of Victoria Simon Fraser University
Academic work
Institutions	Wilfrid Laurier University

Simon Dalby is an Irish-born academic and an author. He is a Professor Emeritus in the Wilfrid Laurier University.

Dalby is known for his work on climate change, environmental security, and geopolitics and is the recipient of 1997–98 Carleton University Faculty Research Achievement Award. He has also authored several books, including Rethinking Environmental Security and Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability.

Education

Dalby earned a B.A. in Geography from Trinity College, University of Dublin, in 1979, followed by an M.A. in Geography from the University of Victoria in 1982. He later obtained a Ph.D. in Geography from Simon Fraser University in 1988.

Career

Dalby began his academic career in 1979 as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Victoria, serving until 1982. He then joined Simon Fraser University, where he was a Teaching Assistant from 1983 to 1986 and a Research Intern from 1986 to 1988. From 1988 to 1989, he was an Instructor in the Geography Department while also teaching at Vancouver Community College from 1988 to 1990. At Simon Fraser University, he served as a Research Associate in the Centre for International Studies from 1990 to 1991 and in the Department of Political Science from 1991 to 1992. Between 1992 and 1993, he was an Instructor in the Department of Social Science at Douglas College in New Westminster. In 1993, he joined Carleton University as an Assistant Professor, serving until 1995. He was an Associate Professor from 1996 to 2001 and a Tenured Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies from 2001 to 2012.

In 2012 he joined Wilfrid Laurier, as a tenured professor, and from 2012 to 2018 he served as the CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. He retired in 2022 and became a Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier, a BSIA Fellow at the Balsillie School, a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Studies at the University of Victoria and a member of the Planet Politics Institute.

Research

Dalby’s research is interdisciplinary in nature, spanning multiple themes. His work has been published in leading academic journals including Alternatives, Geoforum, Geopolitics, International Politics, Political Geography and The Anthropocene Review. Many of his key research themes are summarised in the 2007 open-access article Anthropocene Geopolitics published in Geography Compass. A collection of his publications, co-edited with Roger Boyd, including a lengthy intellectual autobiography, was published by Springer in 2025.

Critical geopolitics

Dalby has conducted extensive research on critical geopolitics. In 1988, in what is the first published paper in what became the field of critical geopolitics, he analyzed how U.S. strategic discourse in the 1970s, particularly through the Committee on the Present Danger, used sovietology, realism, nuclear strategy, and geopolitics to construct the Soviet Union as a threat, justifying militarization and perpetuating Cold War tensions. Two years later, he authored the book Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics. The book explored how Cold War-era strategic thinking persisted in U.S. foreign policy by examining the late 1970s and the role of political groups, especially the Committee on the Present Danger, in shaping confrontational narratives that continued to influence Western geopolitical strategy.

Subsequently, in the 1990s, Dalby collaborated with Professor Gerard Toal to edit special editions of the journals Environment and Planning D in 1994, and Political Geography in 1996 on critical geopolitics. A coedited volume on Rethinking Geopolitics encapsulates much of this discussion and was published by Routledge Publishers in 1998. In collaboration with Paul Routledge, Toal and Dalby also coedited two editions of The Geopolitics Reader, a textbook volume, bringing critical geopolitics themes into university classrooms. Later in 2010, he also investigated how critical geopolitics critiqued Western geopolitical reasoning, highlighting its imperialist and Orientalist foundations in war justification and advocating for a renewed focus on exposing the geographical logic behind modern military interventions and security discourses.

Environmental security

Focusing his research efforts on the subject of environmental security, Dalby’s 1992 paper criticized the traditionally conservative view of security, highlighting its historical roots and ambiguity, and argued for a broader approach incorporating common security and ecological concerns to prevent outdated assumptions from shaping future interpretations with unintended consequences. In related research, while critiquing traditional security discourse, he argued that it should have been rethought ecologically, emphasizing interconnectedness and adaptation rather than state-centric, mechanistic frameworks that justified domination and environmental degradation. Additionally, he critiqued Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy, arguing that his depiction of environmental degradation, overpopulation, and resource scarcity as causes of global instability was overly simplistic, alarmist, and neglectful of economic and political complexities.

Dalby’s 2002 book Environmental Security critically examined how environmental crises challenged traditional security concepts. It explored identity, geopolitics, and political theory, arguing that carbon-driven modernity fueled global insecurity and necessitated a rethinking of security discourse. His other book Security and Environmental Change explored how climate change and globalization created new security threats, emphasizing the need for a fresh geopolitical perspective by examining historical roots, securitization, and resilience strategies to address environmental disruptions affecting global stability and human security. In 2017, he examined how the Anthropocene reshaped social thought, emphasizing humanity's role as a geological force and arguing for a shift from environmental protection to production, with implications for security, politics, and geosocial formations. More recently in 2022, he authored Rethinking Environmental Security, wherein he argued that climate change, rather than military power, was the greatest security threat, challenging traditional concepts and calling for rethinking policies to prioritize ecological sustainability for a secure future in a climate-disrupted world.

Imperial geopolitics

Dalby, as part of his imperial geopolitics research, critiqued the geopolitical framing of 9/11, questioning its classification as war, the America-versus-terrorism narrative, and the lack of alternative perspectives, while exploring how imperial power and territorial assumptions shaped the U.S. response. In 2007, he examined how U.S. national security strategy merged neo-conservative military policies with neo-liberal globalization, using military and economic strategies to control the "dangerous periphery", reinforcing imperialist worldviews and replicating past empire-driven violent practices. A year later, he analyzed Ridley Scott’s films in the context of post-9/11 Western militarism, exploring how they depicted warriors, just war, and interventionism, shaping geopolitical narratives of morality, empire, and the West’s identity against external threats. Moreover, he also critiqued post-9/11 U.S. geopolitics, arguing that the Bush Doctrine’s reliance on high-tech military strategies and simplified geopolitical frameworks overlooked global complexities, ultimately questioning the effectiveness of the War on Terror.

The Anthropocene

In 2007, Dalby challenged taken-for-granted spatial categories in politics, reassessing the War on Terror as neo-imperial, globalization as "glurbanisation," and the Anthropocene’s environmental assumptions, ultimately questioning geographical discourse and defending critical analysis as an essential academic practice. In 2016, he was one of the coauthors (with Anthony D. Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Audra Mitchell and Daniel Levine) of the "Planet Politics Manifesto", examining traditional International Relations (IR), advocating for interdisciplinary reform by integrating climate science, environmental humanities, and international law to address the Anthropocene and climate change, proposing institutional and legal changes for a more progressive global politics. Four years later in 2020, he authored the book Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, wherein he argued that security policies needed to shift from state rivalries to planetary-scale governance, emphasizing sustainability, planetary boundaries, and rethinking global politics to prevent ecological collapse and ensure long-term peace and stability. More recently in 2021, he explored how political perspectives shaped responses to climate change by contrasting Thunberg and Trump, integrating planetary politics and earth sciences, and urging social scientists to rethink borders, security, and ethics amid a globalization-driven climate crisis.

Firepower and climate security

In 2017, Dalby examined how human control of fire—through military firepower and fossil fuel combustion—shaped geopolitics, climate change, and biodiversity loss, linking combustion to global transformations and contrasting political perspectives on energy, security, and environmental governance in the Anthropocene. Through his 2024 paper, he explored how excessive firepower, both in military terms and fossil fuel combustion, threatened global security, arguing for a paradigm shift that linked arms control with climate policy to address the intertwined risks of warfare and environmental destabilization in the Anthropocene. Through another 2024 study, he reframed climate security as a planetary issue, critiqued its geopolitical focus, and emphasized urgent action by proposing adaptation, sustainable habitats, and fossil fuel reductions through treaties akin to arms control to address climate change’s causes directly. Additionally, he also authored a book Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World. The book explored humanity’s reliance on fire, how combustion shaped civilization and fueled climate change, and envisioned a future without burning, proposing sustainable alternatives to prevent a "Hothouse Earth" and ensure a livable planet.

Awards and honors

• 1997-1998 – Faculty Research Achievement Award, Carleton University
• 2012-2018 – CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change, Wilfrid Laurier University

Bibliography

Books

• Environmental Security (2002) ISBN 9780816640263
• Security and Environmental Change (2009) ISBN 9780745642918
• Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics (2016) ISBN 9781474291248
• Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability (2022) 9780776631189
• Rethinking Environmental Security (2023) ISBN 9781035318926
• Pyromania : Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World (2024) ISBN 9781788216500

Selected articles

• "Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet Union as Other". Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance. 13 (4): 415–442. 1988.
• "Security, Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse". Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance. 17 (1): 95–134. 1992.
• "The Environment as Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplan's Coming Anarchy". Ecumene. 3 (4): 472–496. 1996.
• "Calling 911: Geopolitics, Security and America's New War". Geopolitics. 8 (3): 61–86. 2003.
• "Warrior Geopolitics: Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the Kingdom of Heaven". Political Geography. 27 (4): 439–455. 2008.
• "Recontextualising Violence, Power and Nature: The Next Twenty Years of Critical Geopolitics?". Political Geography. 29 (5): 280–288. 2010.
• "The Geopolitics of Climate Change". Political Geography. 37: 38–47. 2013.
• "Framing the Anthropocene: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". The Anthropocene Review. 3 (1): 33–51. 2016.
• "Firepower: Geopolitical Cultures in the Anthropocene". Geopolitics. 23 (3): 718–742. 2018.
• "Reframing Climate Security: The "Planetary" as Policy Context". Geoforum. 155: 104102, 1–8. 2024.