ABSTRACT
As we finish writing this book in early 2008, oil prices have reached US$100/ barrel, NATO is neither winning nor losing a war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iraq continues to be in a bloody quagmire and is receiving incursions from Turkey, the Darfur genocide is well under way, banks are wary to lend to each other following the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage meltdown in the US, the gap between poor and rich continues to be exacerbated, and Colombia has written off huge parts of its territory that are controlled by ‘rogue’ guerrilla groups. Moreover, the Kyoto Protocol and carbon trading initiatives are failing to avert the growth of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, making climate change an ever higher priority policy-making issue, perhaps even more than military security in this era of nuclear proliferation.
