I agree that the EU is very cumbersome at best, which is why the other two examples, of 'voluntary' improvements in energy efficiency and Greenpeace's 'free market' effort to force change are also there.

Generally, most Americans who fit into the doomer camp seem to find it hard to imagine that societies can actually plan for the future and then implement those plans.

Obviously, entropy wins out in the end, which is why the catabolic collapse perspective seems an interesting tool for analyzing such essentially universal processes, but in my opinion, the idea that everything ends is not all that insightful.

In other words, to quote William Shatner -

Live life
Live life like you're gonna die
Because you're gonna
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you're gonna die

Maybe not today or even next year
But before you know it you'll be saying
'Is this all there was?
What was all the fuss?
Why did I bother?'

Now, maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
Because you're gonna die.

Yes it's gonna happen because it's happened to a lot of people I know
My mother, my father, my loves
The president, the kings and the pope
They all had hope....'

A great song, actually. Goes well with the one he wrote about finding his wife drowned in their swimming pool, or the one about how he is not the man to call if an asteriod is about to smash into the Earth.

'....I tell you who else left us
Passed on down to heaven no longer with us
Johnny Cash, JFK, that guy in the Stones
Lou Gehrig, Einstein, and Joey Ramone
Have I convinced you?
Do you read my lips?
This may come as news but it's time
You're gonna die
You're gonna die

By the time you hear this I may well be dead
And you my friend might be next
'Cause we're all gonna die'