[crazy2be]

I'm not convinced having fewer children will help anything and I wish people would stop repeating this. People emit very few greenhouse gasses as a virtue of their existence, the extreme majority of them are emitted by lifestyle choices.

Even in developed countries the differences are stark. Qatar emits 54.7 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita, the United States 24.3 tons, Germany 12.3 tons, Switzerland 7.2 tons. A difference of almost 10x, with countries that all have similar standards of living! In a relatively undeveloped country like Burundi, the emissions are a mere 0.4 tons per capita[0]. A difference of literally 100x!

The best fix is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with import tariffs on goods from countries that do not have such taxes (i.e. China). This internalizes the externalized costs of CO2 emissions, automatically encouraging development of more energy-efficient everything.

[0] Data from 2000, unfortunately, but the numbers have not changed in magnitude since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[titojankowski]

Have either of you checked out Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change?"

http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

Would be cool to hear how it resonates (or not) with your perspectives.