I sit in a hot office and think about this. I am not sure where to ask. I am genuinely curious. I have seen a breakdown of building solar panels to power the earth 2x over in order to recapture carbon equal to the rate it is being produced, but then areas of the earth that were reflective are now absorbtive of heat…
The only silly amd serious easy solution, don’t produce CO2 when not needed.
People in the west don’t need a new smart phone every 6 months, don’t need a new car every 4 year, don’t need new clothes every year just to follow fasion.
Repair what needs repairing, use what you have and still works, don’t buy new just because some sales idiot tells you it’s better. At this moment we have huge waves of replacement of goods that function perfectly, but a new one is slightly more economic with the energy, ignoring the energy that is needed for production and transport. In the west we consume waste, not use products to their maximum potential.
Good news! Us westerners are too poor to do anything like that anymore anyway.
Most are, and still fall in the trap of replacing when repair would be cheaper in the long run. I still miss my 33 yo car that got totalled.
The YouTube video “the story of stuff” describes how the great depression was caused by people buying things once, and once the idea of buy the same thing every few years then trash it became a thing, well the economy keeps rolling
Even if we stop 100% of all co2 production today, we may have a lot of hard times ahead until the co2 gets recaptured somehow.
A lesson taught over and over to me is rich people fomo - if you don’t “invest” in personal productivity, then you will be poor and irrelevant pretty soon then you will get sick and poor people don’t live well when health gives a jackhammer to the face.
I am not as bad as you describe, but I may be more consuming than I could be as I try to maximize wealth.
“Ending, not mending” -BNW