What do you suggest we do today?

You're right. We should all switch off our computers to conserve energy.

I'm with you ... but in my opinion the government does what the voters want -- the voter's don't care -- so why should the government? re: What country? Auntie Em, you are so right! I should have said: the government does what will get them re-elected. If voters cared, so would the government.

Perhaps INDIFFERENCE as you say. However, once the federal government starts hitting us with a carbon tax, and they will, then you will see peoples' behavior changing very quickly in America.

The global warming issue is a complicated issue. If you say you understand all the details you are wrong. No one does. The trouble comes down to proving any minute change is attributable to a specific cause. The changes being observed are so small that some experts argue it's the temperatures being observed fall within the normal changes we've observed from the onset of Earth. Remember the Earth has gone through some big changes in temperature naturally before humans were even here. It's difficult to pinpoint the small changes observed and then link them directly with only the small changes in CO2 concentrations. Maybe it's just too many humans, expelling too much CO2.

It is not accurate to say that "nothing" is being done, but the reason "more" has not been done until the current century has to do with interactions between social, political and economic issues. When scientists first came to a concensus that global warming was actually occurring, large businesses had a direct economic advantage in denying it. Just as companies in the 20th century hired public relations firms to persuade the public that tobacco use could not be proved to cause health problems, large companies whose profits were enhanced by unregulated output of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, spent large amounts of money minimizing -- or outright denying -- that problems were occurring and were progressively worsening. Large corporations do not just "make" money for themselves. They make money for investors in their stock. (The largest are publicly owned.) Also, they provide thousands of jobs for employees. Also, consumers enjoy benefit of the competitively priced products and services of the large corporations. As you can see, then, there were many individuals who would be disadvantaged by laws and regulations that would increase the costs of production. Government officials (elected and regulatory) tend to be discouraged by the social and economic pressures to be slow in introducing and enforcing laws and regulations that negatively impact thousands or millions of employees and consumers by raising costs of production and, also, costs of governing (regulating) controls. A problem that comes on very gradually over time (such as heart problems and cancer from smoking, and such as the impact of global warming on crops and weather) tends to be tolerated until it becomes widespread and severe. Global warming, along with some other ecological changes that threaten future havoc have been tolerable at the level of individuals in society... even as scientists have seen "the handwriting on the wall," so to speak, for decades. Until enough individuals become aware, or begin to experience problems in their everyday personal lives, not much gets done, or can be done, by government. Government regulations have to be financed somehow, and citizens do not like to see taxes increased. In a nutshell then, there are a lot of temporary advantages in putting off acceptance of a need to curb a growing problem until individual voters get hurt enough, or informed enough, or upset enough to insist upon it.