Buying green products is also a type of consumerism. Certain personalities gravitate toward "green" products and buy a bunch of that instead of reducing consump

Buying green products is also a type of consumerism. Certain personalities gravitate toward "green" products and buy a bunch of that instead of reducing consumption (well, I guess consumption is reduced because "green" products are more expensive) for similar reasons as someone who buys other luxury goods. "Organic" and "gluten free" have become memes at this point, and people buy them without understanding what they really mean. People do things because it makes them feel good. Talking about global warming doesn't make people feel good. And it's not a political issue, it's a social one, yet we've dumped it into the realm of politics because we don't want to be responsible for it. At least now we can say "party X is at fault because they didn't support legislation Y". To truly fix a problem like global warming, we need to fix the social aspect of it. Find a way to play off people's self interest instead of making it a partisan issue. Only suggest policy changes as it relates to molding social perspective. We need to find a way for people to selfishly protect the environment, not force people to give up things they like to help someone else... There are simple living communities, but I doubt they'll reach mainstream success. Nonetheless, I think those communities success because there's a way to communicate with others in the community. If you want to help, find a way to make it "cool" to save the environment, and make a way to display that publicly as a status symbol. People are self interested, and to make significant progress generally, you need to play off that.