I am going to assume you mean reducing man's impact on the climate via CO2. I don't believe it is going to be catastrophic AT ALL. But still, I think we should attempt to leave the earth better than we found it and generally the excessive CO2 emissions will cause some problems. SO:
What can you do?
1.) Recycle. This saves in production and transport and thus less CO2 spent.
2.) Reduce. If you use less then all the CO2 that goes into the transport and production of what you are using will be decreased. This can be anything from taking shorter showers to redusing the amount of food you throw away by better planning meals. This save you money.
3.) Reuse. When you reuse something you are keeping it out of landfills AND not purchasing more. This saves you money.
4.) Fuel efficient cars. This is not to say that you have to go out and buy the $50 K e-car. But if you minimize the lifetime cost of your car, then you will be helping. I like the lifetime cost estimate because it includes gas costs and you can account for how long the car lasts. Buying cars that die out after 100,000 miles is not good either. This saves you money.
What can the US do?
1.) Make a concerted efort to switch from coal power to nuclear power. IF done intelligently, this will actually save us all money. We are not currently doing this.
2.) Make a concerted effort to reduce the costs of solar power. The US is doing this. Solar power has been continually decreasing in price. When it is affordable to do so, I would recommend placing solar panels on you home. Currently they will pay for themselves in ~15 years. In about 5 years, I expect these panels will pay for themselves in 10 years. This will save you money in the long run.
3.) Make a concerted effort to increase the miles per gallon of cars AND increase use of e-cars. The US has mandated the increase in fuel efficiency for the car manufactures.
I never recommend CO2 taxes for a very specific reason. Taxes mean increases in costs. China, India and many other countries are currently increasing their use of coal, because it is cheap. We cannot mandate that they change. The only thing we can do is show a more cost-efficient alternative. Overly taxing ourselves, is not going to show them that our solutions are better.
As Baccheus said, we don't want to stop the greenhouse effect we want to limit our addition of CO2 which is adding to the effect and making the planet warmer. Natural greenhouse effect warms the planet ~30c.
Water vapor makes up most of this effect with CO2 adding roughly 3c or 10% to that.
But at pre-industrial levels in the current inter-glacial CO2 was ~280ppm we have increased that to 397ppm and at current rates of growth this is going to be more like 650-700ppm by 2100 that is well over 100% above the pre-industrial level. The expected rise in temperature by 2100 will be in the range of 3-5c, we will lose Arctic sea ice well before that with at current rates of lose, no Summer sea ice by as early as 2030.
Sea level rise of 1m or more with an increase in the melt rates of the major glaciers like Greenland And Antarctica. Glaciers that already show the start of such losses.
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators#l...
and Arctic sea ice also showing signs of major loss
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/...
We don't want to solve the greenhouse effect; we need it. We need to stop changing the composition of the atmosphere in ways that continue to increase the greenhouse effect. The best way to do that is to advance beyond burning stuff as our only way to control energy. There is so much energy available to us that comes from the sun, the earth and gravity that dwarves our energy needs. Burning stuff is not an efficient way to control energy and there's no reason for our species to think it is the only way.
At some point we'll have to admit that we're not gods and may not be able to stop whatever is happening even though we may have started it. It's like starting an avalanche by yelling, the yelling part was well within your ability to do, stopping the avalanche, well that's a bit harder. We need to prepare for the possible changes in agricultural lands, how DNA could be preserved as a store of biodiversity and devise how refugees could be handled.
Stop burning fossil fuels, plant trees , sequester the CO2 and as a long shot put up a barrier in space.
The greenhouse effect is a natural occurrence. Without it the planet would be approximately 33C colder than it is currently, on average. What you are talking about is Anthropogenic Global Warming, or an increasing greenhouse effect due to human emitted greenhouse gases.
http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/g...
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/facu...
http://www.eoearth.org/
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/facu...
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/lectures.ht...
http://www.elic.ucl.ac.be/textbook/conte...
Mitigation and Adaption strategies: http://spark.ucar.edu/longcontent/climat...
planting trees
Nothing is wrong with the climate as it is function normally compared to long term historical climate data.
also what are some good sites
