Peaksurfer‘s Albert Bates has a very good article up called The Great Change: Slouching towards Cancun.
A few tidbits:
Because of the huge outpouring of non-profit energy, money and effort at Copenhagen last year, and the subsequent meltdown of the Copenhagen round, the approach to this year’s COP (Conference of Parties to the Framework Climate Convention) has been like a drunk waking up with a really bad hangover. A hot shower and several carafes of coffee later, many are really wondering if we want to go back into the bar again tonight.
There is fresh meat in Cancun, including some inexperienced groups still enamored of the vision of a low carbon future that might be achieved just by signing a few international agreements, eating fewer animals, driving hybrid cars and changing light bulbs.
To the veterans, who are less like drunks and more like near-suicidal PTSD sufferers, a dramatic reduction of energy consumption in a complex society seems quite unlikely, absent some catastrophic event, which in their darker moments some have even begun to hope for. Even Peak Oil is moving too slowly, with shale gas and biofuels propping up near-term supplies. We need a supervolcano.
[. . .]
Political and military power seeks only to continue itself, by any expediency, no matter how short-sighted. Student protests over tuition increases and most labor union agendas fall into this same expediency. Sooner or later, they are all as deer, frozen in the headlight of an approaching freight train. Nothing in their cultural conditioning or centuries of military history has prepared them for this moment. Nature is no machine, and she is angry when revved up.
I recommend the whole article.