American will do what we have always done. Avoid change. Deny any need to change. Flagrantly flaunt actions that go counter to the direction of change. Reagan removing solar panels from the Whitehouse and declaring "morning in America" and 'deficits don't matter', and removal of the double nickle limit. SUVs, McMansions, and the rest of the conspicuous consumption attitude are part of this. A major problem is that Americans have very short attention spans.

A problem pops up and we do a little of this and little of that and then assume the problem has been solved. Peak oil is really the larger part of the same beast we saw during the oil crisis in the 70s. The problem wasn't solved, and it didn't go away.

To make big changes rapidly we will have to fall flat on our face. It took Pearl Harbor to get people serious about WW2. Consider that WW2 had been under way for years.

Every call for change is met with denial and half measures until something breaks in a very big way. You can see it in Peak Oil, climate change, food safety, and corporate control of both government and the media. Americans don't do maintenance and proactive reform. We always wait for a major disaster to hit. You need a body count to get anything on the agenda.