What this planet and its supportive ecosystems need is for people in developed countries to change their current consumerist fossil-fuel-hungry ways and move swiftly towards a low carbon economy. But many people need a trigger to initiate that change and take action. People also easily find arguments to not take any action or just small easy ones.
One of the arguments I hear most often against the West cutting their own carbon emissions is the growth of emissions in China and other developing countries. But about a third of China's emissions are directly attributable to exports... so these should really be counted as the importer's emissions. To see the size of these exports and where they are going to, I suggest using the services of Worldmapper, who produce distorted and morphed world maps based on many different variables. For example, look at World toy exports, and you'll see that China and the Far East are by far the biggest producers. Then flick to toy imports, and Noth America and Europe are the biggest consumers. If we consumers want to help cut global carbon emissions, we need to buy less stuff overall, and especially imported stuff which has it's own shipping and airfreight footprints.
I find these maps fascinating, as it gives us a whole new perspective on the world. One of my early triggers which changed my life for the greener was travelling around Zimbabwe in 1990. I saw the inequalities first hand; the poverty, pollution, misgovenance, differing values about human life, and other hugely positive differences such as generosity, the importance of celebration and music, creativity and much more. Travelling to a developing country might be one way of understanding some of the problems the World has, but it has it's downside too, mainly air travel, so my second best bet is to watch documentaries, read books and magazines and visit websites.
