In a world where oil production is likely past peak, it seems to me that much of the world is likely to see recession in the next year--especially countries that made large stimulus bailout, and are not now in a position to repeat the stimulus. Also, countries that are declining oil exporters (Britain and Mexico, for example), and countries with big debt problems (Greece, Ireland, Russia, etc) will not do well.

When countries are doing badly themselves, I question whether their interests will be in cooperating with others. It seems like the focus will be on a country's internal issues. But I would like to hear what others think as well.

I voted other, my choice being something of a combination of the first and second choices i.e. Countries will be more willing to cooperate as evidence mounts that change is needed, despite being overwhelmed by other issues, due to continuing recession, more defaults.

IMHO both Peak Oil and AGW/CC are phenomenon that are not going to go away or fix themselves. On the contrary. I think it is going to become harder to deny either of them as time goes by and they become more obvious. Hopefully mankind will wake up to the folly of our ways and seek to do something to decouple "the pursuit of happiness" from the consumption of things, in particular fossil fuel energy.

In my neck of the woods, our government having been elected barely two years ago, is in a position where it has no choice but to institute sweeping new tax measures to try and reduce it's budget deficit. In the meantime the general public is still oblivious to the real nature of the challenges we face. My neighbor is attributing the hardship to the ineptitude or wickedness of the government. People just don't get it.

There are two epiphanies that need to be experienced before any meaningful change of attitudes can take place. First society has to come to grips with the true value of FF energy and it's finite nature. Secondly the true cost to our planet of the wanton consumption of this FF energy must be acknowledged. Unfortunately neither of these thoughts seem to sit well with our apparent natural instincts to "be fruitful and multiply". We may well indeed be no smarter than yeast.

Alan from the islands

How about: "Countries will be more willing and able to cooperate, due to continuing recession, more defaults"?

A good, convincing depression might convince people that we have a problem that requires some cooperation rather than posturing and throwing one's weight around, and prod them to examine other issues such as oil depletion as well. (I know, I'm such an optimist.)

The U.S. Congress in the past week have passed: a general budget of 1.4 trillion dollars, a Defense spending bill of 695 billion dollars and are poised to approve 350 billion dollars for continued unemployment benefits, and 150 billion for the new jobs stimulus. The so called Health Care bill contains untold billions in pork to secure votes from Sen Nelson and Landrieu (sp?)/ The Treasury must roll over 3.5 trillion dollars of short term debt within a few months and this of course does not include the cost of the wars. The U.S. government at this time is extremely limited on options for climate change amelioration and will be even more limited when the rest of the world finally realizes that as far as the dollar goes its game over.

More willing to cooperate, less ability to do anything effective.

Depends on:

1) Effectiveness of the well-funded denialist machine.
2) Effectiveness of those who know how dire the threat is
3) Number and severity of major events that can reasonably be connected with CC.

Number two means that it is partly up to you.

I attended my first climate change talk in 1982. Spent many years living in Alaska where the changes were obvious years ago. So I've been watching this and peak oil come on for yrs. I see the same bickering going on with very little change.

Contrary to many, I don't believe the human animal adjusts well at all. There are way too many examples of people sitting in one place and perishing rather than recognizing the signs and doing something. To me, change happens in layers. There is a layer that sees the warning signs early and talk about it. They are met with ridicule. Very, very slowly additional layers become aware with the masses only when they are dying. Those with the most to lose are the slowest to change. Americans will be the last in this case. "Slow learners" I call them. Right now we are willing to sacrifice our own young and foreign populations by the millions so we can have cheap gas. In my lifetime, I've seen way too many people ignore warning signs to their death.

I'm old and will be gone but I figure in 2-3 decades there may be enough to make things happen. Personally, I think it is too late now. And as far as the fetish with humans surviving, who cares except us. The universe will survive just fine without us. Did before and will after. Just another passing species in the scope of things.

Some would call this a "doomer" point of view. I've come to see it as the natural course of things. Whether we like it or not, we are an endangered species. As my daughter says "I'm too busy to pay attention to these things". So be it.

Every country knows that the only way to cut carbon emissions is to ration fossil fuels and no one wants to be the first to do it. Within a few years the reality of peak oil will kick in and any other problem and especially financial problems will seem trivial. As life styles become more impoverished climate change problems will be pushed way down on the priority list. I see that the world will continue to use fossil fuels as much as possible and will add in renewables and nukes in increasing amounts since that will be the only way to even keep production of goods at only an austere level.

The level of AGW denial is huge and growing not the opposite.

Then if they get any degree of understanding they connect input with output and say that Peak Oil will solve AGW.

Then they say that we are all starting to get it, the change that needs to happen is all around us already, just look at all the NGO that are cropping up all around the world, Hip Hip Hooray. (the reality is that 90% of what those NGO sustain is themselves).

Until humanity takes control of money, money (and the lack thereof) will control our destiny.

The failure of the climate talks confirms (to everyone's dismay and no one's surprise) that the world's governing institutions are not up to the task.

"Luckily" (and I use the word in its most extremely ironic sense) the most likely future is catastrophic failure of carbon wasteful economic/political systems in time to save human life on earth. In either case, that's pretty much out of our hands now. Given the nature of our species it was probably never in our hands in the first place... but hey, it was worth a try (we DO love the grand gesture!)

On the global action scale, I fear that our role at this point is little more than bearing witness to calamity. We now have more serious business to get down to.

At some point the occupants of sinking ships realize that the most truly beneficial activity is not to save the ship, but to save lives. The question then becomes, how big of a group can we depend upon to do the right things to save the most people?

In other words, since we can't control global warming, let's band together as best we can to survive it. Sort of like weather in general, isn't it? You don't listen to the Weather Channel to STOP hurricanes and blizzards... you do it to COPE with them.

Instead of thinking locally and acting globally, let's just think... and act.

I voted other because I don't believe anyone can know anything about the future.

I haven't been following this Copenhagen Conference thing too much but I understand our President (US) went over there and got a historic agreement. How bout that?

We are looking at a century of real class war on a global scale.

I am wondering if perhaps we have passed peak "climate change" and "anthropogenic global warming" and "global warming" discussion in newspapers as well. The Copenhagen convention has been keeping interest in the subject up. But once this passes, I wonder if there will be other issues (financial issues perhaps) that will be of greater concern.

If there is likely not the political will to do much of anything collectively, I wonder whether newspapers will keep the issue in the limelight.

These are some links to discussion counts. It looks like discussion may have peaked in 2007.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=global+w...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=anthropo...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=Climate+change&scoring=t&hl=en&ne...

The party is over or surely near over for sure. But some folks just don't get it. Inhofe went to Copenhagen to uncover the truth. No one recognized him or paid any attention to him, so he stepped forward into a group of reporters and explained that global warming was a hoax that got its start at the UN. One of the reporters recanted, "That's rediculous. You're rediculous!" That was on Rachel Maddow's show last night.

Since the world seems content with acting like they are attempting to maybe do something about global warming and or peak oil, wouldn't it seem appropriate if both dovetailed at some tipping point in unison? Have an oil supply crunch in 2012 as suggested here on TOD, simultaneously occurring with the wholesale release of methane and CO2 from the tundra of Siberia and Alaska. As limited amounts of available fuel sell for 10.79 a gallon, the CO2 level rises 105 ppm in one year!

Then we get a thousand reporters to bus in to Inhofe's town to meet with him and ask if he finally 'believes' in global warming, while also sending a thousand reporters to CERA to ask them if they agree oil has past peak. At least we'll get a laugh from their response or lack thereof. One last laugh to finish the party off.

I chose "will be about the same" because I think the ability could hardly get much lower than it already is. What we've seen at Copenhagen is basically mere talk.

I remain very unsure of what the worst case scenario is. Either end of the oil age could create a deep crisis that wipes out industrial civilization so quickly that emissions are vastly reduced, or the human species could simply devour so much coal and wood to replace oil that emissions will worsen with even more direct effects on ecosystems (imagine deforestation a la Easter Island, only globally).

Of course I retain some hope of wind and solar mitigating both the shortage and the ecological devastation.

More cooperation? Certainly not. We will have resource wars. The USA are already involved in 2 wars to secure future oil supplies. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are all about oil. These criminals will probably attack Iran and Pakistan and many other countries in the future. The Brits will be willing accomplices the Europeans will be pressured and dragged into them.

Other:
Countries will be more willing to cooperate, due to extreme climate changes/evidence of catastrophic problems, but due to economic difficulties/collapse the results will be severely limited.

[edit1]
Is it 7 years till the next CCconf?
I still think by 2016 (maybe 2013) the changes in our atmosphere and oceans will be so obvious that it will impossible to convince all but the most fundamentally religious/anthropocentric that we're pretty well screwed.

Here is Jim Hansen's most recent reply to what has been going on ...

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20091216_TemperatureOfScienc...

plus all the comments you could imagine ...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/jim-hansens-opinion/

A serious plan to address global warming requires that politicians tell the truth. The truth is that we will need to consume way less stuff, to radically change the way we get around, to spend hundreds of billions retrofiting our housing stock, to desuburbanize, and to learn to live in an economy that is steady state if notndeclining.

Politicians at Copenhagen spouted the happy talk that new technology would save us all. Technology will be helpful but will not be sufficient. Unless forced at gun point, people will not abandon what they see as their birthright, the pursuit and consumption of excess.

There are exceptions. There are people who have gladly changed their mode of living in order to minimize their carbon footprint. Perhaps some of the stimulus money should be spent to see what makes these people tic.

Copenhagen was our last chance. We have or will shortly reach the tipping point. Shame on those who are helping to seal our disastrous fate.

Copenhagen was not about rich vs poor but about following the science or not. Shame on Obama for calling this a breakthrough. Step one of recovery is admitting you have a problem. He has not reached step one.

Ten thousand years into the Holocene and we have overpopulated the planet, mortally wounded our own habitat, and yet spend most of our resources on killing each other.

Most people have no idea what the Holocene is, whether or not we have a population problem, the extent of habitat destruction, or why we spend so much on weapons and war.

Most people do not know enough to care .... or care enough to know.

We will focus more on meta-narratives that create ghoulish straw men as Evildoers we must kill. We meld religion, news, information, and entertainment into a poison stew of propaganda.

My son and I watched part of the WWF (or a big pro-wrestling corporation WWW? who knows?) This televised event managed to meld together a consumerist version of Christmas with sexy women, juiced up stunt men, and lots of talk about love for country and for the military.

Cameras panned the faces of soldiers and did close ups of Colonel So-and-So all the while a constant patter of God-Bless-America drivel sloshed from tear-jerking hand-over-heart "love" for country and military to kick-ass high-testosterone body-slamming and fake fighting before the cheering crowd. The entertainers also got to fire big automatic weapons, and at least one soldier was filmed mock wrestling one of those willing and giggling artificial wrestling "Divas."

For the ideological but not so deeply religious, the show was great propaganda theater. For the deeply religious "patriot" the show was just good old fashioned entertainment -- letting off a little steam.

We slip militarism into every sporting event in the USA, combined with the pseudo-Christian narrative. The colors are presented, the national anthem is sung, and "God Bless America" is often sung or or the phrase finds its way into the show as part of the pageantry.

The merger of religion, patriotism, and entertainment culture is just what we need to keep ourselves focused on "full spectrum global domination" to used Rumsfeld's term.

We will scapegoat and fight and "own" all the resources we can grab -- as will others -- and it is this violence that will undo us. We do not even see our own violence for what it is. We mistake it for strength and virtue.

"Nemesis."

James Hansen on David Letterman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiJJgC7B_KY