What's interesting about the US position is that it could--with sufficient direction and energy -- turn the country around quite quickly. It would need a couple of things. First, as rdf pointed out in an excellent comment over at ProgressiveHistorians,

much US militarism these days is (implicitly) promoted as Keynesian economic stimulus. If we cut back on useless or destructive military projects we would toss many people out of work. There is no room in the political spectrum to discuss whether this stimulus could be applied to other sectors instead.

This is spot on. My only follow up questioned why is there no room in the political spectrum for advancing alternate stimulus packages? (outside, of course, that we are ruled by troglodytes) I think that's where activists need to start pushing, re-funnel much of the government defense spending into alternate energy solutions (desperately needed), subsidize a nationwide 'solar/wind initiative' for new and older homes, create the next e-vehicle and revamp our transportation infrastructure, make every government building energy self-sustaining by 2050, grow AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps dramatically, pay off our UN dues, etc...  We can quibble about the details, of course, and I know folks like Starvid would argue for nuclear, but just getting the discussion centered on redirecting funds towards broadly speaking C02 free technologies would be a massive improvement. Any of these ideas would contribute funds directly to private and public sectors in the US which would pour money back into the economy.

As for the military? Let the USAF hold a bake sale to pay for their next F-22, as they used to say...:-) The dependence on military spending economics is what's killing us at bottom, if those resources were redirected toward R&D to make self-sustaining CO2 free technologies highly marketable, we could solve global warming, and sell the technology out to the rest of the world at a profit-- the American way, afterall.

But it's a long shot, really. Given where we are. On the poll, I only gave us a %25 chance--and even that is probably a shade too optimistic--though I would love to be proved wrong.