Which has an 80-times greater planet-warming effect than CO2. Discussion of the (disappointing) UN conference in Lima, Peru that's preliminary to the climate change treaty discussions coming up a year from now in Paris.

...to

1. Severely sanction the biggest offending countries that don't lower their CO2 emissions NOW. Make them pariahs. Refuse them any trade whatsoever.

2. Starting HERE, of course, and cleaning up our own disgusting act FIRST: Subsidies to Big Oil (Jeez), Fracking (double jeez) and all the rest of the corporate crimes against life. To do this, we must--we simply MUST--first get rid of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, which are largely controlled by ONE, PRIVATE, FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED corporation: ES&S, which bought out Diebold. You wonder why we keep 'electing' Congresses with single digit approval ratings? THIS. IS. WHY. They were NOT elected. You think the Koch brothers are bad? The Urosevich brothers are worse (ES&S/Diebold); they have destroyed our democracy's ability to reform itself. That was the PURPOSE of removing vote counting from the PUBLIC VENUE--to prevent the reforms that the Bush Junta made absolutely essential Get rid of these diabolical machines, and, despite every other anti-democratic aspect of corporate rule, we will start to see reform HAPPEN.

3. Stop the subsidies and godawful corruption and atrocities of the "military-industrial-prison complex" and put all those trillions of dollars to work in developing countries to help them develop differently than we did. The U.S. is currently doing the OPPOSITE, with "free trade for the rich" agreements all over the world that are PUSHING THEM to develop EXACTLY as we did: dependence on oil, coal, forest destruction, out-of-control global corporate environmental damage of all kinds, and frenzied consumerism.

4. And EVEN IF we do #1, 2 and 3, we will more than likely need to test and employ technological "quick fixes," such as one I've just read about, blasting salt into the atmosphere (salt brightens clouds, deflecting sunlight). I'm pretty sure that something like this is going to be necessary EVEN WITH significant progress on limiting CO2. That's how dire our situation is and how fast it could turn really, really bad.
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-cloud-brightening-cooler-planet-revealed.html

A country can't "economically sanction" itself. Economic sanctions are a tactic of war employed increasingly broadly, but in the service of wider war. I've seen no hint that the US would ever consider sanctioning a country over issues of liberty and justice, although it's common for the US to offer these up, in a mix of truth and lies, as pretext. The US was about the last country on Earth to recognize the evil of apartheid SA, for example, and considered Nelson Mandela to be a "terrorist" until 2008.

When "technological quick fixes" are applied, they'll have as much time in the test tube as fracking and will undoubtedly be assigned on no-bid contracts to cronies of the oligarchy. Like the spoils of war were assigned to companies like Haliburton. Like torture was contracted out. I see no sign that the US is learning from "mistakes" in these matters, or even signs that the US understands that mistakes have been made. Just as the US war on terror has long ago entered the crazy, the pendulums that'll be twigged by US "technological quick fixes" will send the environment into crazy, and before we even know it.

Please, don't wish this on us.

necessary to save human civilization and, indeed, life on earth itself. Climate change can get bad really fast, with, for instance, massive disruption of food systems and billions of people starving, or (and?) the world's coastal cities and many island countries under water, while other once-fertile areas quickly turn to desert. We--the human race--are piling C02 emissions ON TOP OF 100 years of OTHER human damage to the planet, including pouring pollutants of every kind into the oceans, poisoning and destroying agricultural soils, and massive deforestation and invasion/destruction of wild areas, with combined enormous impacts on essential species (just to mention one essential to agriculture: bees) and complete loss of an enormous number of species. Add ocean warming with C02, as we have done, and the whole system--planet earth's biosphere--can suddenly collapse, inflicting mind-boggling suffering on living beings of every kind. It is no exaggeration to say that such a collapse may be in progress NOW.

So, if you contract life-threatening cancer, do you choose radical surgery and/or radiation/chemo, with, say, 25% chance of survival, or do you give up and die because these remedies are tied to predatory capitalists and a filthy system of health care that is all about money?

I'm frankly not sure what I would choose personally, but I know what I would choose for the whole planet and all future human and allied life: Try to save it, however you can and whatever the chances!

I'm a long time environmental activist and am very familiar with predatory capitalist environmental "remedies." I know how corrupt they can be and how awry they can go. But our climate change situation is SO DIRE, now, and can get worse so fast, that I couldn't care less how corrupt/profitable a "quick fix" might be (will likely be!) IF IT WORKS, or has even a small chance of working. I'm not an Armageddonist who wants to see earth's ecosystem collapse as a lesson to capitalists and all us "sinful" consumers.

Also, a "quick fix" is likely to happen, given our predatory capitalist system and its powers-that-be. We don't have much, or any, control over that. We can only hope that IT WORKS, and doesn't have "unintended consequences" that are worse than earth ecosystem collapse.

I think that the likeliest scenario is inaction to the point of dire crisis, then efforts at a "quick fix" (rather than serious efforts to curtail C02, will a "quick fix" STILL needed). Part of my best-guess scenario is based on the blockade against reform in the U.S., of which the 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems are the latest, and I think the most devastating, tactic. Oil, coal, military contractor and other lying, thieving, planet-killing interests are actively preventing reform in the most blatant ways, in a country with great potential for leadership in curtailing these interests and saving the planet. It is very obvious to me what they are doing and why, and how they are doing it. A "quick fix" is quite likely, by them, when their interests become threatened by climate change, and, as I said, we can only hope IT WORKS, and gives us time to reform our democracy so that it, too, starts working.

The U.S. is, of course, not alone on this planet. China, Russia and others are continuing to pollute, like we are, and are doing nothing about the threatened collapse of planetary life, and the first two are not likely to become democracies--let alone effective, functioning, planet-saving democracies--any time soon. We can only hope that, a) we or they don't instigate world war (we can kiss the planet good-bye in that case), and b) their powers-that-be find it in their self-interest to devise their own "quick fix" or go along with ours. (Yeah, I'm thinking a "quick fix" effort is pretty inevitable.)

Nature is wonderfully self-healing, if only given a chance. A "quick fix" might enable Nature to perform her miracles, and give us all a breather in which to figure things out--like, how to effectively govern ourselves, and how to live in harmony with each other and our natural home. To drag these various predatory economic/government systems (including our own) into serious reform in time to significantly reduce C02 emissions, so that a "quick fix" is NOT needed, is not possible, in my view. Maybe in time, but that is what we don't have--time.

Stakes of Mass Extinction are being ignored for greed and corruption. I'm still against capital punishment and have been for more 'n 40 years, but perhaps we could put all these robbers and crooks, once they're convicted, to an unhabited island where patrol boats keep 'em on and others away. I see there being thousands of corruption criminals to put on the island.

People are going to scale up vehicle sizes, and focus less on efficiency, now that gas is so cheap.