Personal choice is a very small aspect here. Americans can not choose to have lower carbon cement, steel, manufacturing, shipping, airliners, etc. Yes, we can do a lot by not flying ourselves, buying less items, eating less meat, but at the end of the day: MOST of our solutions are going to come from corporations and government.

Exactly. An individual can live their entire life taking short showers, abstaining from meat, and generally living like it's the 15th century and all of their efforts are erased when the Keystone XL pipeline sprays 300,000 gallons of oil over North Dakota.

https://time.com/5731775/north-dakota-keystone-pipeline-spil...

Oil pipeline spills make me furious, but they don't have the exact same effects as carbon emissions. It's not a useful comparison.

Don't forget, the military is the biggest emitter on the planet. We should rapidly downsize all militaries immediately.

We’re already over the safe threshold. And as a practical matter we won’t be at zero tomorrow, so we’re going to go even further past it.

We’ll need to do both: reduce emissions to zero, and then suck more out.

Jimmy Carter tried this and got vilified for it. You don't get into positions of power by telling Americans how to do more with less. You get there by telling Americans "More, more, always more, more for you. More, more, more. I promise."

Because it’s also the least effective strategy. The reality is getting nearly everyone to change their behavior just isn’t gonna happen.

Even if everyone in America went vegan, showered once a day and biked everywhere wouldn’t change much with impoverished countries coming out of the third world. If you can’t get them to change then it doesn’t really matter.

Big problems require big, comprehensive solutions. For that you need government to function effectively regulate, make climate bills countries can stick to.

We already have the tools we need to get climate change turned around but we don’t have the political will.

Wait. Does the average American shower more than once daily? Is water consumption/heating for showering even a measurable component of GHG emissions?

Not at all, we need to cut back on emissions everywhere. That also applies to Americans, who emit 3-4 times more per capita than what is sustainable.

> Even if everyone in America went vegan

> we don’t have the political will.

Something tells me that achieving the first would more easily lead to the second. For a politician whose constituency is mostly vegans, their work on climate change will determine whether they keep their seat. If their constituents are pickup-truck-driving, McMansion-owning suburbanites, it's not going to be a priority.

I recognize that getting everyone to go vegan isn't possible or maybe even desirable. But let's not pretend that willing personal sacrifice isn't at least part of the solution.

Wearing a sweater instead of heating my home improves my standard of living? What kind of bizarre doublespeak is this?