It’s strange yet on the eve of COP21 in Paris, starting on November 30th, where humanity will try to save itself, that reasoned, careful analysis of previous such attempts have been heedlessly left to one side.

While we need international institutions like the UN to facilitate a global energy and land-use transition, the UN cannot function, as it has in the past, as a tar-pit or morass to entrap the good intentions of leaders and citizens worldwide to build a new energy and land use regime.

The causal framework that blames only fossil fuel companies also excuses us consumers who were and are only too happy to continue the fossil-fueled party, especially with no visible impingements on our fun from the side of the climate until quite recently.