Your 11 tons is total US emissions (including industrial), spread out across the entire population. Of course the US emits 5x that of Brazil or Egypt, the US produces 5x the output.

Moving into micro houses isn’t going to cut it, you’d need to slash US economic activity to reduce those numbers (an entire new technology).

Microhousing would be just one development carbon taxing would bring about- if we began to price our food appropriately for example animal agriculture would largely come to an end except for luxuries, and that would do a great deal to cut emissions. Personal vehicles and flying would also become cost prohibitive. These are only a few of the ways taxing carbon could make our lifestyles more sustainable and shrink highly polluting sectors of our economy such that we reach a more sustainable amount of emissions per capita.

Which is why we won't ever have those carbon taxes. As soon as politicians implement (or probably even seriously suggest) carbon taxes with enough pain to legitimately incentivize people to give up their homes (and all their stuff) to live in "microhousing", some other politician will come along and tell your constituents that you're crazy and they have a better way. And poof, just like that you're out of a job.

We're not going to solve climate change by democracies adopting high carbon taxes.

I worry that without the voting public waking up to the reality of how deep in the hole we already are we won't solve climate change at all. No near-future technology has the ability to reduce emissions by the amount we need to, besides widespread deployment of nuclear power which is also not politically viable. At some point people will, either willingly or by force (such as widespread natural disaster and famine), realize that things have to change.

I think the problem here is that you still have some hope that climate change can be reversed or at least mitigated. It can't.

There is simply no way developed nations are going to curb their emissions enough in time, and that developing nations will refrain from increasing their emissions, for us to avoid this disaster.

We might as well get used to the idea that our civilization is going to collapse before too long, and there's really nothing we can do about it. Other civilizations in the past collapsed and disappeared because of environmental change, and ours will be no different.

Well, a little different. We have globe-spanning transportation and communications. Actual technology to bring to bear. The best chance of mitigating the disaster that has ever existed in history.

Yes, but before that actual technology, there wasn't a problem because we weren't pumping so much carbon into the atmosphere. And even with technology, there's too many political problems to actually use that technology to solve the problem before it's too late, which climate scientists are telling us it already is.

Our globe-spanning communications seems like it should help us solve these problems together, but instead look what it's brought us: anti-vaxers convincing a lot of people not to vaccinate, which has now brought back diseases we thought were almost extinct. Instead of using these communications to convince people about real problems and solve them, these communications have instead enabled the stupidest people to have a much larger voice and influence, which has led us to disaster politically in the US for one (just look at who we elected in 2016).

Sorry, but I don't see how there's any way out of this mess. We can't just figure things out in 50 years and then start fixing the problem; by then it'll be far too late.

That's exactly what's going to happen. Humanity will not solve climate change until we're already suffering badly from its effects.

Which is a shame since it is the only realistic option.

That's the whole point: it's not a realistic option because it ignores political reality.

Political realities are the easiest to change in this case. See segregation.

Can't I just keep my moderately sized home and add solar panels? I would definitely rather do that and bike to the train station.

If we implemented a carbon pricing scheme and these panels allowed you to heat and cool your home with no or minimal draw off the grid, this would be an affordable option.