For nearly three years, global attention has focused on the three arrows of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s “Abenomics” as well as his aggressive new security policies. Yet beneath the radar, his government has begun to vigorously promote renewable energy and efficiency.

The institutions through which Japan’s energy technocrats are adapting Germany’s lessons to Japanese circumstances are potentially very powerful. They may be rebooting some of the mechanisms that were key to Japan’s startling postwar recovery.

As retired Navy Rear Admiral David Titley, an expert on climate change, wrote in a Fox News editorial in an effort to shake some sense into the heads of denialists: “The parallels between the political decisions regarding climate change we have made and the decisions that led Europe to World War One are striking – and sobering. The decisions made in 1914 reflected political policies pursued for short-term gains and benefits, coupled with institutional hubris, and a failure to imagine and understand the risks or to learn from recent history.”