> will not be enough of a problem for the most-polluting humans to care about

I live in the country that pollutes the most per capita. I'm ashamed to say I haven't significantly changed my behavior and consumption patterns. But I look around myself and nobody else has either. Heck, we even voted in someone whose team wants to take actions that accelerate climate change. So this party will keep going until something terrible happens that actually impacts the folks at the top.

They will move to New Zealand or make Hail Mary effort to colonize off-planet, and then war and famine pick off the 5-6 billion people that the earth cannot sustain (absent massive changes). Some of the people at the top know about this (in the country you are referencing), and they don't care. This is why they are attempting to systematically take apart health care, education, means of disseminating information, and other pillars of a resilient civic society.

>I haven't significantly changed my behavior and consumption patterns

You shouldn't be ashamed about this per se, because the type of action that will combat climate change is action by governments and corporations. An Inconvenient Truth made everyone think that small personal decisions are the way toward a greener future (think changing your lightbulb), but they aren't.

No, small personal decisions are the way forward. As that accumulates opinion which then changes which party and policies people vote for, their buying patterns, etc and therefore changes government/corporations.

Will it though? That's what worries me about climate change. I think the whole situation is subject to Jevons Paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Using less CO2 (for a given activity) without reducing well being much just means we are becoming more efficient with it. Which means we could potentially use more CO2, globally.

Don't get me wrong, I think individual action is good. But will it solve it? I think the only things that would solve it are:

1. Making a source of energy superior enough to CO2 that people don't even desire carbon 2. Leaving the carbon in the ground

I think #1 may be a precondition for #2.

Of course, if the small personal decisions help develop the technology in #1, they may help more directly than simply reducing consumption.

I believe you're right about individual decisions to become more active on these issues can make a difference both on the government and the business level. In many ways, it already has made a difference as many businesses, even in the most cautious industries, have tried to at least do something to reduce their emissions.

However, the impacts of an individual, even collectively, don't matter much on this issue. The change has to come in the way energy is generated in the large scale if it's going to make a difference in the problem. It also takes actions from government like a carbon tax or incentives to create more clean energy sources, or both to push these collective decisions in a better direction.

This position though is pretty much contingent on nearly every person making nearly every environmentally-friendly decision then, no?

How do you think people decide which small personal decisions to make?

I don't blame you :) it is a crisis of leadership for sure, since so many rich businesses are polluting, and so many individual consumers justify things to themselves by saying "but i NEED my SUV, mcmansion, refrigerator" and etc

in my opinion it will be more necessary to find a way to suck co2 out of the atmosphere and place it somewhere, rather than attempt to limit how much demand there is for things that produce it as a waste product

"find a way to suck co2 out of the atmosphere and place it somewhere"

That's what forests do, and we're cutting them down with alacrity.

Also, I don't think you're done the "number of humans" x "energy consumption of suv + mcmansion" + "carbon density of likely fuel sources" math yet. It is simply impossible to sustain.

More trees and plant cover can help in the short term, but it's not going to solve the long term problem because those trees will break down and release the CO2 they've captured. This wasn't always the case as the ability for microbes and fungi to break down trees evolved later, which is how many of those coal deposits were created in the first place.

The main benefits from forest are habitats for wildlife, prevention of erosion, and ways to improve biodiversity. Their benefits to climate change are limited to reduced sunlight absorption because of their higher reflectivity and a small amount of a carbon sink if they take over land that was cleared and turned into plains, or farms or whatever.

Yup, fully aware of the Carboniferous period. But in a world with fungi, the CO2 is still trapped as the living trees and as trees die they are replaced with new ones. There is a steady state equilibrium.

I am not pro SUV or pro mcmansion

i am pro forest

Me too! Wasn't implying otherwise :)

Sweet!! It is a funny situation, isn't it? We have a natural organism that does quite literally suck CO2 out of the air and replace it with O2, which we just so happen need to breathe.

and yet many actors from many different societal origins are chopping down trees for furniture, building, fuel, etc etc. If the answer is as simple as "hire a bunch of people to plant trees", then it makes one wonder why money hasn't been diverted for this either at a governmental or charity level

Seems promising: Meet the Scientist Turning CO2 Into Ethanol - http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/interview...

It is just a battery, and not a very good one. The energy efficiency is only 20% - meaning you have to use 4 times the energy to run the reaction and convert the CO2 as you will get from burning the ethanol. And of course burning the ethanol releases the CO2. If you want to sequestor carbon I don't think this is a promising route to take.

Great, thank you! this would help put a dent in climate change AND land use complaints surrounding ethanol :)

We already have this technology, they're known as CO2 scrubbers.

I have a bad memory but I seem to recall Sergey Bring or Larry Wall or someone "important in technology" saying that this is basically already a solved problem -- heavily investing in to CO2 scrubber technology, hooking the things up via solar, and deploying them across the world's deserts -- but that todays problem is that leadership problem you mentioned. No one (Government) wants to foot the bill.

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