I want to do more

It's summer in Australia. Unlike other summers, bats fall from the sky, gasoline vaporizes inside the gas pump, wildfires burn the most-populated regions and produce mushroom clouds and fire tornadoes, and temperatures are going so high that their Bureau of Meteorology had to add a new color to their temperature chart.

I'm getting depressed by the inability of humanity to change its consumptive behavior. I've changed my own behavior over the course of my lifetime. I use my limited, individual influence on the "free market" to reduce carbon dioxide generation.

• I once refused for a month to send any of my trash to the dumpster, so I could collect it and see how much (and what types) of waste I generated. Afterwards, I changed my buying habits to reduce my consumption of unnecessary packaging.
• I have 2 weeks worth of dress shirts for work, I wash them only once per month which means that I wear them twice between washings, but I wear them once and then hang them to "air out" for two weeks until their 2nd use.
• I use a washing machine for my dress shirts, but then I hang them in the basement to air dry instead of using the electric dryer.
• I occasionally bicycle to work. This behavior is new. I started at age 43. I should have started long ago.
• I choose when possible to buy low-energy computer hardware. Performance is not quite as good in some areas, but I adjust to any limitations.

I could do more. I should do more. It's difficult to self-limit behavior, though, when our society is constructed for easy gratification. Just flip a switch, turn a key, or push a button, then get whatever you want. A 2012 November report from the World Bank (pdf) puts the issue in stark terms. Scientists have been warning about 2C changes and how disruptive it would be to human activity.

However, even if global warming is limited to 2C, global mean sea level could continue to rise, with some estimates ranging between 1.5 and 4 meters above present-day levels by the year 2300. (page xv)

Submersion of American cities has already been projected.  I expect my birthplace in the Navy port of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, to be entirely underwater.  We've almost reached the 2C mark already. They're examining now what 4C warming would do to us, and they're saying that humans will have to abandon some parts of the planet because of effects on our sources of food and water.

The impacts of the extreme heat waves projected for a 4C world have not been evaluated, but they could be expected to vastly exceed the consequences experienced to date and potentially exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems. (page xv)
In fact, in a 4C world climate change seems likely to become the dominant driver of ecosystem shifts, surpassing habitat destruction as the greatest threat to biodiversity. Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth's ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience. (page xvi)
Similarly, stresses on human health, such as heat waves, malnutrition, and decreasing quality of drinking water due to seawater intrusion, have the potential to overburden health-care systems to a point where adaptation is no longer possible, and dislocation is forced. Thus, given that uncertainty remains about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4C world is possible. (page xviii)

So 2C is bad, and 4C is catastrophic. Scientists say that we are headed for 6C warming if we continue doing nothing. *dejected sigh*

I want to do more, but I need help staying focused on my own behavioral change. So many Americans choose willful ignorance, though, that I'm losing faith that our democratic institution can respond in time to provide any useful framework for encouraging collective behavioral change.

"More, faster" goes the chant of exponential growth. Nature always, in all circumstances, ends exponential growth.  She is harsh.