Average carbon footprint of a us citizen is 20 metric tons. The lowest a us citizen can go "naturally" is 8.5 tons, like if you're a homeless person eating in soup kitchens.
To go negative to "make up for the rest of the world" what is that, -140 metric tons? I guess you have to buy carbon offsets. At about $10 / ton, that's $1500 - $1600 / year per US citizen, depending on how much you cut your own emissions naturally.
You could also plant trees, but it takes 40 years for it to absorb a ton. So maybe donate your money and plant 160 trees per year, and then 40 years from now you can stop donating money.
And work like hell to HOLD THEIR POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE for creating systems that make it possible to completely ignore it.
Recycling and buying an electric car are great but basically pissing in the wind. A few hippies (myself included) will not fix this.
The increase in the rate of climate change is primarily driven by the increased emission of greenhouse gasses.
The primary driver of increased greenhouse gasses (GHG) is the burning of fossil fuels emitting CO2.
In order to stay below 2°C, we need to remain below 2900 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere (source: one of the ipcc reports, I forget which).
Our atmosphere currently has somewhere around 1900 gigatons of CO2, as of 2011. (corrected from earlier error.)
We are currently releasing 35-40 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year (the US releases about 5), and the rate is currently increasing from year to year.
In order to remain below 2900 gigatons of CO2, we need to reach a GHG emission rate of 0 (zero) overall within the next 7-12 years, through some combination of reduction/elimination of burning fossil fuels, and sequestering of current CO2 from the atmosphere.
Therefore, each person should strive to not only reduce their carbon footprint, but eliminate it and aim for a negative carbon footprint.