OK, here is my chaotic set of thoughts on all the above... and some wildeyed ideas for winning hearts and minds and changing behaviours.

1. a challenge of this proportion requires an heroic mythos to galvanise public support.  the measures proposed have to be in keeping with an heroic mythos -- and the "New Apollo Project" concept is one way of doing this... however it risks overestimating the appeal of the space program to the current electorate because of the sentimentality w/which two generations of technocrats who dream up policy proposals regard it.  Could backfire in some demographics.

2. the climateers desperately need a novelist and a poet laureate and a good rock band :-) to provide minatory tales, anthems, solidarity songs, text to be typeset on posters and lettered on protest signs, etc.  they also need, in this iconographic age, some kind of logo.  I have told this story before but in Brunner's prescient novel The Sheep Look Up, the environmentalist underground used a very simple grafitti symbol and a slogan.  the symbol was a circle with a flattened X under it (a minimalist skull and bones) and the slogan was "Stop You're Killing Me."  it was easy to spraypaint or sticker.  never underestimate street cred.

3. there is already an appetite among tv viewers for two kinds of shows:  "survivor" shows and "how to" shows.  travelogues are also popular.  if I were a multigazillionaire I would put together a line up of tv shows as follows:
   

"Green My House", a DIY and major remodel show featuring really neat, reasonably sized "green homes" inhabited by happy people who are saving money.  lots of how-to and lifestyle chitchat.
"Survivor:  Earth", a competition show where a limited cast of people tries to get their global footprint down to 1 terron and the audience votes them out if they are not trying hard enough or thinking of all the possible options.
"What Car?" a show about people who live without cars, discussing what tradeoffs they made, why they made this choice, how much money they save, where they live and how local policies make it easier or harder, etc.
"Kewl Green" a show featuring the kewlest green technology around the world, particularly showcasing competition between nation states to make the kewlest lighest cheapest greenest stuff
"Back Story" a show which in each episode takes one familiar product and traces its entire back story and carbon costs from shop shelf to raw materials and forward to disposal, showing true energy costs.
"Traditional Green" an eye-candy travelogue showing how traditional architecture and lifeways worldwide are intelligently adapted to various climates, soil conditions, etc. and how this traditional inventiveness can be applied to materials and applications in other contexts such as western projects.
"climatewatch" a show featuring each episode a Bad and a Good news story about some climate or biosphere issue.
"Going Green" a show featuring enjoyable travelogue to attractive places without car or airplane use -- by bus, rail, bike, ferry, steamboat, etc.
"Real Food" a cooking show about making delicious meals from local/sustainably grown ingredients, each episode filmed in a different region or county.

sure, it's propaganda.  so is 100 percent of what's on TV today.  let's fight back :-)

4. get some comicbook artist or more than one to crank out some graphic novels set in a Green future, very visionary, very ingenious and geek-friendly

5. campaign like hell for lifting restrictions on freedoms where this helps to reduce demand and encourage green behavioural changes.  for example repeal zoning laws that prohibit mixed use;  overrule all CC&Rs that prohibit any energy saving behaviour like hanging laundry, installing passive or PV solar, putting in a green roof, windmill, planting veggies, composting etc.  relax planning dept procedures and allow faster processing for all construction projects using green/low-burn technology;  axe stupid restrictions banning (in my city) houses of a shape other than rectangular, earth houses, etc.  make it easier, not harder, to build state of the art green homes.  lift planning restrictions on homes under 1500 sf to encourage smaller home building;  tax the hell out of homes over 2500 sf.   show the public that some red tape is being cut through and tossed overboard in response to an emergency situation, so that they will be less resentful of taxation or constraint elsewhere.  revoke all bicycle registration requirements and helmet laws, offer legal privilege to cyclists in all collision investigations (there is precedent for this last in at least 2 countries).  make it easy and hasslefree to walk, use PT, and cycle.  make it slowly less convenient, over a period of years, to drive.  require all PT carriers to accept bicycles unboxed (this is a major psychological obstacle to extending bike journeys by bus or rail in the US).

6. the US currently has more prisoners than farmers.  for all nonviolent incarcerees, commute sentence to a lesser number of years of labour on public energy conservation and biotic restoration projects (like restoring wetlands around NOLA to save the enormous costs of bigger and tougher seawalls).  WPA all over again but with a "radical realist" green agenda.

7. institute longhaul taxation in addition to rising fuel prices to discourage the routine and insane transport of perishables over enormous distances.  provide strong tax and subsidy incentives to relocalise agriculture and wean farmers off fossil dependency.

8. revive national rail networks with a major investment for upgrade and overhaul.  provide fed matching funds for all bus and lightrail public transit projects in major cities.  subsidise "try it for a month free" passes for any metro/commute network.

9. cut subsidies to all ag activities that are fossil fuel, fossil water, and soil intensive liquidators.  shame them for what they are -- welfare queens on an unprecedented scale -- and start subsidising land and water stewardship and fossil frugality.

10. mandate K-12 curriculum in energy and biotic literacy, with bioregional literacy required at about the 9th grade level.  no one should graduate from HS without knowing where their city/town/village's water/food/power come from and what it costs in energy to provide.

11. institute a Green competition at all county fairs nationwide -- with prizes for biggest energy or water savings, biggest pesticide or synthofertiliser use reduction, in several categories from 4H to a few hundred acres.  make the prizes worth competing for.

12. institute a Green category for all Science Fairs, for both implementations of existing ideas, new idea prototypes and models, etc. for sustainable tech.

13. stop providing free parking.  period.  anywhere.

14. equalise subsidies for air/road/rail/river with a compensatory preference for rail and river to make up for decades of favouritism for air and road.

15. phase in product labelling showing energy/carbon/GHG costs ("externalities") and miles travelled to shelf, for all consumer goods.  over about 4 years.  after 4 years, mandate such labels and make it an offence for any company larger than a certain size to ship product without such label.

16. relax absurd ag/food laws designed to suppress smallholders, market gardeners, etc.  in general relax constraints on business operations under a fixed size limit, to encourage ingenuity and localisation.  tighten emissions standards and jack up penalties for operations over a certain size threshold.

17. cancel all tax writeoffs for business travel.  provide tax credits for teleconferencing equipment and facilities.

18. of course, stop giving away logging and extraction rights on public lands.  charge very dearly for stripping the larder.

19. tax not only the production and sale of carbon/fossil intensive product, but the advertising of such products, at a swingeing rate.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

It is repeatedly stated that energy saving proposals cannot and must not mention public transit or cycling, because "people just won't stand for it."  The assumption as I have heard it many times, is that carcentric transport is a behaviour/cultural pattern so ingrained that it would take prefrontal lobotomy to alter it.

But it;s already being altered -- and in Los Angeles, Car Heaven just by a puny (by euro standards) rise in gas prices.

"I was really, really worried that first day," Petersen says. "Within one week, I was going fast and enjoying going fast."

    Petersen is a good example of the new face of bike commuting - professional and average folks who are abandoning their daily drive for bikes in increasing numbers for a variety of reasons: fitness, a refusal to sit in traffic, politics or pocketbook, especially during days of skyrocketing gas prices.

    Every day, according to the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, between 100,000 and 240,000 Angelenos ride a bike and 24,000 commute by bicycle. There are signs that the number is climbing and set to climb higher. For the last seven years, large employers in the El Segundo area have been conducting a Bike-to-Work challenge - including one last Tuesday, during national Bike-to-Work week, that saw 306 cyclists pedaling to work versus 245 the year before. (This year's winner: Raytheon, which beat Aerospace Corp., Los Angeles Air Force Base and Boeing when 61 of its employees showed up to work on bikes.)

    Demand for on-site bike commuting seminars at workplaces has surged, including requests from big employers such as LAX, 20th Century Fox and Disneyland, according to Kastle Lund, executive director of Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

    Demand has surged too, for hybrids, the kinds of bikes often ridden by new commuters - bicycles with wide tires, flat handle bars and a relaxed riding position - and they're being purchased by customers who haven't ridden much in the past, says David Landia, assistant manager of Budget Pro Bikes in Eagle Rock. According to the National Bicycle Dealers Assn., last year was a bumper one for bike sales, which totaled close to 20 million.

    Los Angeles is working to become more bike friendly. It recently completed a bike lane that runs parallel to the Orange Line, and the first phase of the San Fernando Road Bike Path, which will run from Roxford to San Fernando, is scheduled to open in a few months, says Michelle Mowery, senior bicycle coordinator for the City of Los Angeles.

OK this is not hordes of people, but it's a measurable response, it's behaviour change from people who were not already in the choir .... and this is mostly without major incentives or penalties, just pricey parking and rising gas costs.  Imagine what behavioural changes creative policy could encourage?

<obligatory carping disclaimer>I have very mixed feelings about all this "facilities construction" stuff     justified by increasing cycling numbers (or alleged to lure increasing numbers to cycling) but the facilities debate is far too deep and wide for a general thread.</ocd>

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

can we fast-rewind the wil.e.coyote cartoon drop?

the odds loom large and heavy against us...

what other choice but to try?

loved your poems at your website, btw...

microdoggerel, indeed

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Most of us are zooming along blissfully in exactly the wrong direction: building more freeways, more malls, more auto-dependent housing developments, increasingly grotesque and demeaning commercial enterprises sucking the meaning out of our lives and American society as a whole. It's the collective insanity of our society that makes it possible for us to drive, consume and build freeways as though we could go on forever.

You want to change that then you need to change the policies that make such behaviour rational for individuals. There is no contradiction between people on the one hand doing what's best for them under the current circumstances - e.g. buying a house way out in the exurbs because of the astronomical prices for family housing in the city and inner suburbs, or buying goods that have been shipped halfway around the world and back again - and supporting policies that will bring the individual good in line with the social good.  Teaching people about choices that make sense on both the individual and the social level is a good idea.  Berating middle and working class families for not spending more for less, as if they just had the luxury to choose otherwise, is counterproductive arrogance. So push for more money for public transport as opposed to roads, for changing zoning laws so that you can build new housing in urban and inner suburbs with commuter rail, to tax inefficient vehicles, for laws that encourage renewable energy.

The neolibs were able to do it for stuff that hurts both individual and society, surely progressives should be able to figure out how to do it for policies that help society.  At the same time convince upper middle class progressives that they have to make sacrifices too, and not just the old style progressive ones like taxation. When I listen to people in my neighbourhood complaining about the evils of exurban sprawl in one breath, while opposing building high-rise urban housing in the next, I feel like slamming my head on the wall.

 . . . is that we go down in the most spectacular, thorough, and painful crash in human history.  

That said, people will come around when they have to, and not a moment before.  Everyone has a different comfort zone with regard to facing truth; the art is to find that zone, and push right to the edge.  If you want to know the absolute, dead worst that can happen, read about Easter Island.  I used to think that scenerio was unavailable to us but I am no longer so sure.  Every step we can take away from that outcome we can count as an actual plus.  

At this moment, Cuba is our foremost example of successful, sudden de-industrialization, but its political system, which played a key role in the process, is rather unique.  "Success" not in quotes, because they avoided outright starvation--it doesn't get much better than that.  

No matter what happens, the world will become local again.  Europe perhaps less so than the US, since you have functioning rail systems that will be usable well into the crisis.  Still, the point is that the essentials of life, such as food, will consist of that which can be obtained locallly.  This is why organic farming is so important (industrial agriculture is going down soon) and permaculture is a beacon of hope.  

Political chaos is sure to ensue, and only robust, local social structures have any hope of surviving this.  The essential nature of this chaos will be people grabbing what they can to maintain their past ways, and thus sealing off their own and their neighbors' futures.  It will happen:  Once you have dealt with the basics of survival, it is the biggest threat, and can undo everything.  (A typical example:  Right now the city of Los Angeles is trying to shut down community gardens and take the land to build more freeways.  The gardens will determine whether people live or die, but before it is finished that freeway will be useless.)  

The US--because of its more extensive wrong choices--will be going down before Europe, so you will get lots of case studies from us what not to do.  

The Fates are kind.

A major difficulty is that many in power have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So Tony has, for instance, been quoted as saying that he will do nothing, nothing whatsoever, that might impact the lifestyles of the UK.

So taxing air fuel ? Nah !! He's building more airport runways instead.

Energy conservation ? Nope, he's building nuclear power stations that can't be ready before the energy crunch.

etc etc.

Also, the Murdoch newspapers often confuse the message of global warming, promoting it as a good thing of hot summers, warmer winters, decent UK wine etc etc. And of course, every time there's a cold snap, they ask "Global warming ? What global warming ?" It is difficult for effective action when there is som much effective propaganda against reason.

So, I think we need an unambiguous sign that this is urgent and now. Which is why I sometimes look interestedly at the Greenland Icecap situation. It might take something as dramatic as that, which may happen in the next few years to convince people that things have to happen now.

It's like the frog in the pot of boiling water, this gentle descent into chaos will never have a moment of clarity and without that we'll just stay still till it's way too late.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Beppe Grillo, comedian and political activist purged from Italian tv by Berlusconi, has made this wonderful film about alternative energy. He integrates pieces of his show with real life examples from communities in Germany and Switzerland and with interviews with scientists alternative think tanks.

It's 50 min and requires the GOOGLE media viewer.

link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2386621792940328510&q=genre%3Acomedy+is%3Afree+duration% 3Along

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819