lohwengk, November 7 at 8:08 am

“However, they need us to buy their goods, so if we vote with our pocket books and only buy what is environmentally friendly, the businessmen will start making more of these goods”.

This is some extreme wisdom.  A vote with the pocketbook is 100 times more powerful than one at the ballot box. 

This is the point that Americans don’t get, mainly because they really don’t want to give up their stuff.  Like Gore, we want to continue to eat our steaks and hope all the others will take care of the hard part. 

It is why nothing ever really changes.  People go to the ballot box, vote, and then complain for four years.  Vote again, and complain again.  Political voting is easy, but doesn’t really do too much, does it?

Sad to say, civil disobedience only works when the people in power are already looking for an excuse to move in that direction. One example is Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement in India - the British overlords were looking for an excuse to get out of an unprofitable empire. The very same British overlords let Malaya (now Malaysia) go without Tunku Abdul Rahman needing to lead any civil disobedience movement at all.
If the French had been in charge of India at that time, Gandhi and his followers would have been massacred. We saw this happening in Tiannanmen, China. All those protesting students got crushed under the tracks of tanks, and there was no change whatsoever.
In the case of climate change, it doesn’t feel like the political and business leaders of the world are interested in change. This means that mere civil disobedience won’t work. What would work is money (as usual). Since the powers that be are the ones with money, bribing them won’t work. However, they need us to buy their goods, so if we vote with our pocket books and only buy what is environmentally friendly, the businessmen will start making more of these goods. In other words, if we keep on buying gas guzzling SUVs and toilet paper that is made of wood from virgin forests, then that is what the businessmen will continue making regardless of the effects of climate change. OTOH, if we buy smaller gas-efficient cars and toilet paper made from recycled materials, then that is what the businessmen will make.

So Al, ya gonna lead by example?