The unrestrained release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the burning of fossil fuels now threatens the political stability of human civilization. Every year, climate change kills approximately 300,000 people and costs the global economy more than $100 billion. Even the most conservative of predictions for the future anticipates that extreme weather events combined with food and water shortages and increased diseases could unravel many nation states by 2040. While most scientific experts now call for radical reductions in GHGs (by 80 per cent) by 2050, many nations remain reluctant to change course. The favourable outcome of United Nations Climate Change Conference talks aimed at establishing a new global carbon treaty, to be held in Copenhagen this December, is in doubt. The greatest threat to our future, argues famed Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer Dixon, is not "that our fossil fuel economy will disappear but that it will endure."