>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful.

This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate that less activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet.

It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the Planet out of balance, and for some reason we think we're going to fix things by doing even more. The less active and industrious human beings are, the less they obsess over money and work, the less taxing we are on the Planet.