In Australia this federal election year, all the major parties are very strongly playing the Climate Change card, in fact it's arguably the single biggest card that is getting played. It's hard to guess exactly what has caused this - as it certainly wasn't the case at the last election 3 years ago (and remember Kyoto was 1999 - the issue has been in the public eye for a long time, and the science known for much longer before that), although some have speculated that the current drought conditions have made us all personally much more aware of how dependent we are on a stable climate.
Sadly, resource depletion, and specificially increasing oil dependence, hasn't made it on to the radar screens at all.

Hi Grey,

Always good to have a counter-argument. Just as an aside, honestly, I would really like to have your take on a "best case" path/scenario - (note I'm not using the word "solution").

re: "I suspect that Edwards, Obama, and others are lots more clued in on the state of affairs than you imagine."

This gets into psychology. My completely anecdotal experience says that it's about impossible to get a handle on the degree of consciousness of most people, including oneself. In fact, there may be some kind of logical impossibility there. (How do you know if you're unaware/insensitive in a particular situation or wrt to certain events? Only in hindsight.)* "Peak" has got to be one of the biggest challenges.

re: "...politicians don't care...". Well, they might. It's hard to tell.

Here's the thing. Define the "real problem."

(*Sometimes people develop practices to help, (periodic reflection) and that might help. I don't know.)

Second "request". Figure out what it is they do care about. And then address that.

Or, exercise another option. Politicians can be circumvented.