These are pretty simple ideas:
Timers or motion detectors on lights.
Continue programs to upgrade thermal efficiency in housing, i.e. insulation, sealing windows and doors, programmable thermostats, more efficient heating and cooling systems.
Encourage more fuel efficient transportation, car pooling, trains, mass transit.
Live in smaller spaces. Until the 20th century people would close off sections of large homes during the winter and only heat part of the building, bedrooms had minimal heat.
Reward good design and construction, probably through the tax system, not just for buildings, but for industry, transportation and appliances.
Reflective roofs, highways and parking lots
Develop a system of “carbon footprint” labeling so consumers can make better energy choices in the same way that food labeling works to help people make good food choices.
Education and research
Hey, remember “Shower with a friend”. (That might complicate the next though.)
Reduce population through access to birth control
Then there are the big ones:
Nuclear power, (I know, very controversial)
All the alternative energies, wind, tide, solar, geothermal, biofuels.
Pursue research into actively controlling CO2 levels or the climate like, algae in the ocean, injecting reflective substances into the upper layers of the atmosphere, (volcanoes change climate this way)
Carbon sequestration
I’m not claiming these are all viable ideas, but, most of these, particularly the first part of the list, are quite risk free and I believe could be argued would increase, rather than diminish, the quality of life. I know I"m being ridiculously upbeat, and I acknowledge that there are enormous reasons for pessimism, but, what the hell, you might as well go down smiling and enjoying the hard work instead of sitting around moaning and whining.
