Monty,

The carbon footprint of somebody who simply lives in modern society is extremely high. The mere act of using USD currency and being protected by military makes our footprint much higher than people in Somalia 'living' off $1 a day.

Carbon neutrality is possible. Read the synopsis in MacKay's book that I linked. We've had the technology to not pollute the atmosphere yet live a modernized life for some time now.

A mistake many people make is looking at action to change results in a linear fashion. Case in point: The carbon footprint of a gas guzzling, business as usual, Fox news watching meat eater is immensely lower than the carbon footprint of somebody like Al Gore*, but people like Al Gore are the ones who are actually doing what it would take to keep AGW from getting out of control. This is not something in anyway that can be approached on the individual level. The only thing that will ever have an effect on AGW is mass public opinion and governmental policy.

This is exactly like elections and voting. How I vote has zero effect on the outcome of the election because I live in a very blue district and I would vote blue. Now, if I truly wanted to make a difference in the political arena I would have to at the very least move to a swing district or become an activist that would garner a bunch of shift in voting outcomes. As it is now, even though my vote is technically one vote, it is also practically worthless due to these other factors based in the reality that we're not dealing with a black and white, linear system. But that doesn't keep me from understanding the system, and doing what I can to make changes

*Al Gore's carbon footprint is insanely high because his actions generate tremendous economic activity which is energized by fossil fuels, and very high GHG activities as well (like air travel. FYI, one round trip flight around the US generates more carbon footprint than a person produces in an entire year of automobile driving)