Japanese trains run to the minute, and the country's businesses pride themselves on energy-efficiency. The Japanese boast of their eco-services for eco-products in eco-cities. Yet they rely primarily on imported fossil fuel and nuclear power, live in energy-wasteful homes, and import 60 percent of their food. That may be changing in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Maybe.

Japan is at a crucial tipping point. As an island nation, it offers a microcosmic look at the problems facing the rest of the globe, including peak oil and climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions. And as Japan tips, so may the world.

I landed at Narita airport on May 11, 2011, two months after the magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 20,500 people on the coast of northeastern Japan's Tohoku region and left a swath of destruction up to 10-km inland. That zone included the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, where a loss of electric power led to a full meltdown of three out of six reactors.