The main issue is the actual effect of your actions. One person living as energy-frugally as possible may make them feel good, but ultimately it's pointless unless another couple of billion people join you, and sadly, many of us are some varying degree of apathetic or ignorant.

I may be wrong, but I think larger actions like replacing power plants, etc. are far easier to do at this point.

It's a funny thing these days; there are two "optimistic" camps. One that says that social change is impossible, but technology can save us, and the other that says that we have no real near-term technological fixes, but we can be saved by large-scale changes to society. In an irony that would be delicious if it weren't so existentially terrifying, I think they are both right and both wrong, but not the way we'd wish.

Building out technology that we already have can save us. We just need to agree to pay for it, which we can't because some of us are too poor to make changes required, some of us are apathetic, some of us are actively antagonistic (think coal rollers and such), and some of us are ignorant (willfully or otherwise). Like all large-scale problems, it's the people who are in the way, not tech.

> When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly

It's one thing to do something to make yourself feel comfortable, it's another to say things to make others feel uncomfortable.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I actually acknowledged that my own life is less comfortable than it could be (and I still probably use more than "my share" of carbon compared to global means). I will in fact be traveling this summer and I assure you that flying on a plane would be more comfortable than the arrangements I have made.

But life is often uncomfortable; sometimes you must endure a needle or a surgery in order to receive life-saving medicine. My city in South Texas hit a record heat index of 117 last year - I can assure you that that is very uncomfortable, and yet we are still in the relatively early stages of global warming; I assume that I'll need to move north at some point in my life.

But even I fear some discomforts - I cannot imagine a frank discussion with children today about the future they are staring down, and I have to imagine its one that nearly all parents will face (not that I am among them).