Who will save the earth?

"Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned…will we realize that we cannot eat money".
It's a Cree Indian prophecy. I felt like crying the first time I read it. Perhaps because somewhere deep within, I accepted the truth in it. If there are any lessons to be learnt from the Kyoto protocol and the Bali convention, it is this: We are not going to stop polluting.
You can blame the US government for throwing the spanner in the works time and again, but there is not much hope from the regulatory side. The automobile and oil & gas companies lobby in the US is extremely powerful. Too powerful to allow any radical changes in regulation. It is the average US citizen who can rise to the occasion. The per capita CO2 emission in US is an astounding 23 tonnes! Even UK is less than half at 11 tonnes. India and China are piddly comparisons at 1.7 tonnes and 3.1 tonnes respectively. Even if you consider the top 10% population of India, who earn more than 30k per month, the figure comes to just 5 tonnes. I remember Bill Bryson taunting the nonchalant attitude of the Americans in "Lost Continent": I read once that it takes 75,000 trees to produce one issue of the Sunday New York Times – and it's well worth every trembling leaf. So what if our grandchildren have no oxygen to breathe? F**k 'em." If you want to get more depressed, read this.
Its high time we stopped. We have perhaps another ten more years. The only way is to cut down our consumption. I share Arthur C. Clarke's 90th birthday wish, that mankind reduces its dependence on oil and moves to renewable sources of energy. If this does not happen in another ten years, then I am going to follow my friends advice. Buy a house in Kodaikanal, and by the time of retirement, it will be a prime seaside property.