will not be enough of a problem for the most-polluting humans to care about
I live in the country that pollutes the most per capita. I'm ashamed to say I haven't significantly changed my behavior and consumption patterns. But I look around myself and nobody else has either. Heck, we even voted in someone whose team wants to take actions that accelerate climate change. So this party will keep going until something terrible happens that actually impacts the folks at the top.
in my opinion it will be more necessary to find a way to suck co2 out of the atmosphere and place it somewhere, rather than attempt to limit how much demand there is for things that produce it as a waste product
That's what forests do, and we're cutting them down with alacrity.
Also, I don't think you're done the "number of humans" x "energy consumption of suv + mcmansion" + "carbon density of likely fuel sources" math yet. It is simply impossible to sustain.
i am pro forest
and yet many actors from many different societal origins are chopping down trees for furniture, building, fuel, etc etc. If the answer is as simple as "hire a bunch of people to plant trees", then it makes one wonder why money hasn't been diverted for this either at a governmental or charity level
The main benefits from forest are habitats for wildlife, prevention of erosion, and ways to improve biodiversity. Their benefits to climate change are limited to reduced sunlight absorption because of their higher reflectivity and a small amount of a carbon sink if they take over land that was cleared and turned into plains, or farms or whatever.
I have a bad memory but I seem to recall Sergey Bring or Larry Wall or someone "important in technology" saying that this is basically already a solved problem -- heavily investing in to CO2 scrubber technology, hooking the things up via solar, and deploying them across the world's deserts -- but that todays problem is that leadership problem you mentioned. No one (Government) wants to foot the bill.
You shouldn't be ashamed about this per se, because the type of action that will combat climate change is action by governments and corporations. An Inconvenient Truth made everyone think that small personal decisions are the way toward a greener future (think changing your lightbulb), but they aren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Using less CO2 (for a given activity) without reducing well being much just means we are becoming more efficient with it. Which means we could potentially use more CO2, globally.
Don't get me wrong, I think individual action is good. But will it solve it? I think the only things that would solve it are:
1. Making a source of energy superior enough to CO2 that people don't even desire carbon 2. Leaving the carbon in the ground
I think #1 may be a precondition for #2.
Of course, if the small personal decisions help develop the technology in #1, they may help more directly than simply reducing consumption.
However, the impacts of an individual, even collectively, don't matter much on this issue. The change has to come in the way energy is generated in the large scale if it's going to make a difference in the problem. It also takes actions from government like a carbon tax or incentives to create more clean energy sources, or both to push these collective decisions in a better direction.