Yes, that makes it difficult to get people to change the damaging behaviours -- "OK so far," said the man as he fell past the 13th floor -- but the opportunities presented by extreme, imminent crisis for authoritarianism, embezzlement, violence and bad craziness are almost as alarming as the climate destab itself.

The Emergency Response mindset is used to legitimise all kinds of dysfunctional "solutions" and sell a lot of dull axes that would be better gathering rust imho... (pace Jerome and Starvid, but I do not see nuclear power as a viable solution, yet the nuke industry was quick as you please to jump on the climate bandwagon and claim to be not only greener-than-thou, but Our Only Hope)  I think perhaps we should come up with a name for this strategy -- the Obi-Wan Gambit?  it's been tried now by, let's see...

the Militarists:  climate change will imminently lead to a tidal wave of hungry brown people invading the citadels of whitefella civilisation, so we need to (gee why are we not surprised) beef up our militaries, throw more billions into barrier walls, border security, satellite surveillance and (just to make sure) lots of WMD so we can exterminate them if they can't be kept out.  and of course we'll continue to need the services of a small army of strategists and thinktankers to war-game the menacing scenarios, and since civil unrest is definitely on the table we think that measures should be taken to monitor and control our internal population as well -- Right Now.  hey, this is an Emergency, don't question us, just give us the money and shut up.

the Ringworld Engineers:  climate change will imminently lead to complete planetary doom so we should stop all this silly cavilling about risk (we are Doomed anyway if we fail) and start nuking volcanoes to induce partial nuclear winter via an umbrella of ash particles, or seeding the oceans with huge amounts of various chemicals to reduce their albedo, or (fill in your own Larry Niven plotline here, but remember that he was instrumental in selling the SDI boondoggle to the US elite).  we've seen a few too many Indiana Jones movies and we are dead certain that a spectacular, heroic Engineering Intervention by serious whitefellas in lab coats is your Only Hope. side effects?  unintended consequences?  who cares about side effects, this is an emergency, we have nothing to lose!  oh, and by the way, a few billion in tax revenues is nothing to sneeze at when the crisis is so imminent, so fast-track that allocation if you don't mind.  we wouldn't want the delay and confusion of any kind of peer review or public process to seal our doom, now would we?

the Millenarians:  imminent crisis means imminent Rapture, which is a Good Thing and means we are about to be freed from this earthly sphere to rejoin [fill in your favourite version of God here] in Heaven.  so we can neglect, all we want, our earthly duties of democratic participate, stewardship of the web of life, etc.  you need to get right with God, right now, and as we are the one true church we are your Only Hope.

the Sales Droids:  imminent crisis means you really need to buy, buy, buy a bunch of stuff to ensure the survival of your precious self and your family.  there's nothing useful you can do (like riding your bike or eating locally) so ignore any promptings of responsibility or social change and prepare, instead, for a sudden violent dislocation for which you should really gear up, intensely, right now (Matt Savinar comes to mind) -- we got MREs, we got water, we got guns, we got survival manuals... we accept Paypal and Visa.  and survivalism is your only hope.

and so on.

taking the long view -- the civilisational/anthro critique of folks like Wright, Ponting, Diamond, Tainter, Heinberg, Georgescu-Roegen, the biotic-system view of energy flows and consumption/carrying-capacity/growth -- leads us, I think inevitably, to the conclusion that there is a fundamental disconnect between the ideology of capitalism (just a new and more obfuscated face of the ideology of imperialism imho -- growth growth growth), the practise of industrialism (even if it calls itself Communist), and biotic reality.  

to avoid the eventual brick wall of population/consumption/carrying-capacity, a retooling of ideology, culture, and behaviour would be required -- towards an ideology (a cultural consciousness, if you will) of limits and biotic responsibility -- that cannot be accomplished in a decade or two.  so it would be far better if the crisis were not quite so imminent, because time really is needed -- a generation or two would be nice.

the counterargument to all this is that the public of the affluent nations, bribed into a trance of compliance as never before by the largesse doled out by their masters (the industrial barons and financiers), (a) don't want anything to change, and (b) can only be motivated to give up their wallowing materialism by big doses of Fear!  Fear!  Fear!

but Fear, Fear, Fear seems to lead to fatalism, despair, and even sullen, resentful partying (hey, if I'm doomed, I'm gonna live it up while I can!).  end-of-world cults traditionally don't demonstrate the most responsible social behaviours, as they have no sense of preserving anything for their kids (if any), no expectation of cultural continuity, and hence no need for an ethical code or social strictures.  excessive fatalism could contribute enormously to the unravelling of our social fabric, already much weakened by the endless individualist moth-nibbling of neoliberalism, capitalism, etc.

where does that leave us?  if we want to encourage, like patient gardeners, the tiny sprouts of social change leading in a more survivable direction, how do we steer a course between Fear!Fear!Fear! and comfortable complacency?

meanwhile, the "leadership" cadres of North America, rotten to the core, continue to push as hard as they can in the wrong direction -- widen more freeways, sell more cars, build more airports, funnel more money into elite salaries, bail out the financiers, wage more wars!  all they have is a hammer and everything looks nail-shaped.  what are we going to do about these people?  if we really only had ten years, we might go all Obi-Wan and shoot them -- it's our only hope! -- but if we have 50 or 100 years, surely there's something less violent we can do to get them in better touch with reality?

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...