"If you have to assume man-made climate change is real in order to get to these issues, please do that. Otherwise this thread won't be new but just a repetition other comment threads."
Okay, for the sake of argument, lets pretend these things are true:
1. Climate change is real.
2. Climate change will have more bad consequences then good consequences.
3. The most effective solution will be in curbing Humanity's output of CO2.
As long as China, India and a burgeoning Africa are accelerating their build-out of coal fired plants, it really doesn't matter what we do: CO2 emissions will not drop, they will increase. There are two pathways, which I will call, "The way of peace" and "The way of violence"
The way of violence involves binding treaties, which include every nation on Earth. This will necessarily involve threats, sanctions and possibly warfare.
The way of peace involves getting our heads out of our asses for a moment and designing safe, mass producible atomic power plants. Our current regulatory structure makes this impossible. If we can solve this, everything else falls into place: If we don't have to burn things to make electricity, then we can already reduce emissions. If electricity becomes cheap enough then people will stop heating with carbon based fuels and electric vehicles will start to make sense. Long distance aircraft will be the last thing which runs directly off atomic generated electricity, though it could be done.
Individuals making little sacrifices will either make no significant difference, or will reduce the pressure to do things which would have an actual impact.
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