It may be that politicians, even if they are PO aware will be reluctant to speak out. When confronted with an unusual challenge or novel threat, the most common response of administrators is to ignore it. Errors of commission are seen to be worse than errors of omission. In business and public administration it is always good to be correct, but if one has to be wrong, it is best to be wrong at the same time as everyone else and if you don't do anything you can't do anthing wrong! From their point of view it is a no-brainer.

Tom Whipple put it this way:

“Thus, the real dilemma of coping (with) peak oil, for a while at least, is really quite simple. If the government should lay out the full ramifications of peaking in hopes of rallying the people to make preparations, the most immediate consequence is likely to be serious economic setback triggered by an unambiguous announcement itself.
The alternative is to remain silent. Leave the future a bit murky with room for hope. Don’t panic anybody into selling assets or husbanding their money with talk of an unaffordable future. Talk about reducing dependence of foreign oil instead. This carries the implication that the foreign oil will always be there in an emergency and that reducing dependence will be a matter of patriotic choice not necessity.
As no responsible government wants to see economic troubles start any sooner than absolutely necessary, there will probably never be a strong, clear, unambiguous, widely disseminated report on the timing of peak oil.”

As so many are keen to point out we can build a new future. Sustainable buildings (high thermal mass, airtight construction and heat recovery ventilation) We can design communities intelligently and avoid the need to consume as much energy in the first place. Things are looking bad now but 5 - 10 years down the line they could very easily be infinatly worse, thats why its so important to make this a big issue. We need a way to reform our economies that takes into account energy, emissions, health and hapiness. The bigggest health issue in the 'civilised' world is obesity. With a better diet and excercise many health benefits would come. This issues ties up so many others and gives us an oppotunity to work out so many things in hopefully a short space of time. Video conferencing, teleworking and web 2.0 allow ideas to spread so fast to so many people.

Does 'waking up' (to use the matrix analogy) more people actually speed us towards economic problems as they no longer take part in the race? As good as the ELP plan is would it cause problems if implemented by many people on a short time scale. Low skilled local jobs are going to be a big area, I see large groups of volunteers tending to farm land, renivating large housing into multi person housing, teaching and caring for children as jobs and travel are likely to be harder to come by. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we can build strong local economies where everyone plays a part especially the pub land lord :)

Population decline could be managed without a lot of excess deaths, if we lived in a rational world and could employ a little foresight.