ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a picture of the central challenges to climate mitigation in the US from a human ecological perspective and it also examines the idea of the dramatic consequences of a slightly raised global temperature. To climate activists, many challenges remain. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, cheap energy and cheap land have made car dependency and thus the oil dependency physically and economically viable in the US. The country's diverse political structure, with its traditionally strong focus on local self-control, is simultaneously an obstacle to and a possibility for climate mitigation. Society is comprised of all the structures organised by humans, it is where people interact and where natural resources are transformed and reproduced to be made available and useful to humans. Cooperation is needed to make physical planning efficient and daily transportation more environmentally friendly, not to mention the critical need for an enhanced public transportation system.
