That cause is the dinosaur-like structure of economies that grew out of the Industrial Revolution and evaded the cost of fixing heavy pollution of smokestack industries by exporting them around the globe to others keen to get rich too.
The mirrors and smoke model that makes money and pretends waste disappears has now turned full circle, and come up against itself at the Copenhagen climate change conference.
The enduring meeting of 192 parties will be the first time all nations, side-by-side, have had to face the truth that there is nowhere left to pollute - and nowhere else to borrow from.

Until now science has seemed esoteric compared to the pragmatism and rationality of the market. Every time a new disaster occurred, the same mantra was chanted: "markets will adjust".

Well, the markets adjusted dreadfully in September last year, and economists' solution for the US is to print 8 billion $100-paper bills.
Climate change can be a more disastrous market adjustment. Catastrophic geographic situations cannot be papered over with money. That financial accounting has become unhinged from the real economy is already obvious