ABSTRACT. Why does the Kyoto mechanism fail again? Is oil more than energy? Is this a construct that architectures the world currently known to and permitted for us? “No one governs innocently” – de Beauvoir noted in her 1947’s The Ethics of Ambiguity… I open my piece by reflecting upon the recent revolts that have swept through the Middle East and North Africa. He fears little democratic headway will be made in the region in the face of the much larger geopolitical imperative to maintain the “hydrocarbon status quo” and to it related confrontational nostalgia. For their own very specific reasons, which author delineates herein, each of the world’s major military and economic powers has little motivation to alter its present energy mix by embracing technological, political and socio-economic alternatives to fossil-fuels. The one possible exception is Japan, a country with scant indigenous hydrocarbon resources and a growing number of energy-related problems. This fact, for me, indicates Asia and its Far East as a probable zone of the new/Green-tech excellence in the decade to come.  pp. 128–142

Keywords: democracy, freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity, geopolitics, ideology, Asia, hydrocarbon, status quo, Kyoto Protocol, petrodollars and petro-security, green technology, international legal system, diplomacy and international legitimacy, Japan, Iran, GCC, Russia, the US, China, Canada, imperatives for the 21st century