I agree that the west is on the right path, the air and rivers certainly are a lot cleaner then 20 years ago. However this is a global problem. China and India have taken up the role we once had and unfortunately there are quite a few more people in those countries. For example China is completing 1 or 2 new coal plants per week.
Luckily China is working hard on green energy and preventing pollution from coal power plants.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/green-china-rising/73263/
The project installed brand new equipment on a large coal-fired power plant to capture 120,000 tons of CO2 each year.
Huaneng will install 10,000 MW of wind in the next few years (which almost equals U.S. total wind power) and an equal amount of solar (more than the U.S. total).
Clean-tech is the main event, at over $40 billion per year in government investment.
Imagine if we would spend that kind of money on clean energy research.
We seem the be stagnating in the west. At least in Canada Budget 2012 pretty much put green energy development on hold.
http://www.pembina.org/blog/616
Sure we'll plant some trees, how much that benefits exactly is still under debate.
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/carbon_offsetting_tree_planting.htm
In order to deal with currently generated carbon dioxide ... approximately equivalent to the entire land area of Spain, twice as big as the United Kingdom and bigger than any US state other than Texas (696,621 sq km.) or Alaska (1,717,854 sq. km.) To be forested anew each year and held as such forever.
And currently we have this little misstep called oil sands development.
http://oilsandstruth.org/
The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.
The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin.
We won't destroy the climate. We'll reduce the biodiversity a bit, slightly shift temperate zones around, create some more desserts. A few more hurricanes and floods. Nothing big on earth's geological scale. Certainly nothing compared to what wiped out the dinausours. Life will go on, our luxury lifestyles probably won't though.
The end of the age of oil will have a much bigger impact. The world will slowly start to change when oil becomes really expensive. Suddenly shipping goods back and forth all over the world gets a real price tag. Maybe ships can go back to burning coal, or go nuclear... How far do trucks get on batteries or planes?
