However, I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to do that on their own. For every person doing an ecologically responsible thing (taking trains instead of planes, taking public transit instead of driving, etc), there is just such a huge magnitude of people doing the "wrong" thing to cancel it out, largely because that (from a short-term-pragmatic-standpoint, the "wrong" thing is better) or at least cheaper. If you value your time at all, flying across the country is cheaper, meat is readibly available and inexpensive (and typically taste good), and driving to work is substantially easier than biking.
I don't know anything about ecology so I'll admit that I might regret writing this entire comment in a year, but it seems to me that the only way we're going to make a dent in climate change is to a) create technology that provides an experience that is competitive with the dirty version of something (electric cars could be a good example), or b) to start artificially taxing things that are really hurting the environment. If we started charging an extra dollar-per-gallon tax on gasoline, it would probably discourage people from driving as much, and put more economic incentive on point a).
I can commend someone not flying to conferences anymore, but I am afraid to say that I dont have the same self-discipline.