Of course, the US is still in better shape in many respects than Europe. I wonder which falls first.
As it should be. Frankly I cannot understand why you are having any problems at all, you have vast resources (well some of them...) huge amounts of land, and considerable wealth. You are simply suffering from poor management and utilisation of those assets.
There is a noticeable culture difference too, I recall my complete astonishment at learning of my ex-employers (US) attempts to persuade our (UK) government to allow them to come and log our forests for us! Its like, What!? are they serious? Mad or from Mars or something? We have had to manage stuff like that for century's, just in order to keep what little we have left. I mean, did they really think we had been buying all that paper from them for over a century, because actually we had loads of our own but just couldn't be bothered to use it? They were so used to the idea of there being unlimited quantities (of forest) they could just buy whatever they wanted and did not need to grow it at all. Bad news...you do or you've got no business.
The whole global warming/fossil fuels thing is probably the same attitude, so much of the political power base is rooted in energy production, that they are just not willing to accept a change to less immediately profitable but sustainable forms, even when it is becoming clear that not doing it is going to become very very expensive for everyone. I guess these attitudes take a long time to change.
Its not a question of who falls first, the (globalisation) leap is made, its a longer drop from the top.
Some of Europe's structural problems go right back to ww2, the global economic problem just exposed some very old sores to some harsh realities. Trouble is, I don't think our current political forms can deal with it, they only know how to do sticky plasters, skin grafts are way beyond their understanding.
