Environmentalists have been crying "wolf!" so long that the general public is not going to come running.

We are "designed " in such a way that we are geared to regulating our day to day behavior by imitating our fellow citizens.Our mental time frames are geared to the short term.

The public may mosey over-even hurry over- and take a look once in a while when there are bloody body parts of little boys to be seen.

A very few of the gaping onlookers will prove to be smart enough to realize that the wolves can get them and by extension,everybody.

Everybody else will forget about what they have seen in a day or two.

I have never been fortunate enough to actually witness hunting lions but I read that once a kill is made the rest of the zebras seem to realize has the danger has passed and don't run much farther..A few minutes later zebra behavior is back to normal.

There seems to be a built in bias that keeps us from recognizing new threats.

Doing what everybody else is doing has been a very successful strategy over the long run.Believing what everyone else believes has been a very successful strategy.

"You can't show off new insulation to your neighbors."

But you can by publishing the stats on each and every utility bill. The city-wide average, as well as your neighbors number should be on there. The lowest residential bill in a 5 mile radius gets a free month -- I would be winning at first but it wouldn't take others long to catch up.

I halted my experiment with only one test subject - my wife. I read the SciAm article by Colin Campbell back in 1999 and began banging on about Peak Oil every chance I got. two years later, for Father's Day, she bought me a new Series 2 TiVo. But you see, we already had a TiVo that worked perfectly fine. I knew then and there that we as a species would push harder on the accelerator the closer to the cliff we got.

Another problem is lack of feedback for our efforts: so you sell your car and go everywhere by bike. Other than being sweaty and perhaps losing a few pounds, what is the outcome? You have to be motivated by some version of "self-righteousness". It's the same with trying to get fit, or eat healthy. So you do it for a day or a week, and you don't really feel that different. Meanwhile, you feel "deprived", because you haven't had your dose of high fat "numbing" or couch potato behavior. On the other hand, if you set a goal of growing yummy tomatoes, you will have these cool little plants to look at and soon enough, they will bloom and bear fruit. Perhaps this is why seed sales are rising by 30% whereas driving behavior only decreases by very small amounts.

Yesterday evening I came across information about the Northwest Earth Institute (http://www.nwei.org/). They target this sort of inertia by bringing together a group of people to discuss an issue over several weeks. This results in lasting change in beliefs, attitudes and behavior for some of them. It would also predictably result in an improved sense of community, a good in itself. I got a chance to look at their "guidebooks" for the discussions, also called "courses". They are brilliant! The discussion questions are really interesting! I would love to do this with my neighbors or parents at my kids' school.