The philosophical and political quest for peace between nations states dates back as far as Immanuel Kant’s hugely influential 1795 essay Perpetual Peace. However, over the last two centuries dramatically destructive wars have again and again undermined the Kantian ideal.

Dr Stein Tonnesson is Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway. A historian whose PhD research focused on the causes of the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, he sees the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels as a potential catalyst of insecurity in the global arena. Warning that nations pursuing narrow national solutions to the crisis based on their own self interest will ‘envenomate the international climate’ he is nevertheless hopeful that co-operation at a global level is possible.