[wizofaus]

Fossil fuel corporations will have to "conspire" to reduce production though, unless they can conspire to come up with some way of extracting said fuels and allowing them to be used without the release of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The massive amount of capital investment that currently goes into producing fossil fuels needs to start being directed towards producing energy in a manner compatible with maintaining a habitable planet, and it's hard to see that happening until we collectively agree that it's not reasonable to profit from fossil fuel extraction and combustion. And yes, the governments of countries like China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are absolutely critical to that effort - until there's a real sense such governments are prepared to prepared to make radical changes in how their economies function then there's little the rest of us can do to alter the trajectory of global emissions. On that basis as an individual I'm happy to make lifestyle changes that may happen to also reduce my overall ecological footprint but at least bring some other benefit (driving less being the obvious one - even if it somehow caused more carbon emissions, the upsides of spending less time sitting in traffic are way too numerable to dismiss).