This means that most of the world leaders expect the "catastrophic" effects to happen and need to start taking counter measures now. For places like Bangladesh there don't seem to be any reasonable ones if the oceans rise as expected.
For the US to cut emission back by half would mean going back to a lifestyle similar to that in the 1950's. At that point people had TV, automobiles, refrigerators and other household appliances. What has changed since then has been the number of autos per family, the absolute size of the population and the widespread use of air conditioning (especially in the south and southwest).
Transistorized electronics like computers and the like use less power than the old vacuum tube radios and TV's of the time, so blaming electricity use on new gadgets is only slightly true.
The simple truth is that the government of the US is controlled by oil interests. Many in government have a direct interest (such as the Bush family and Cheney) and many get funding from oil or oil-related firms for their campaigns. The oil thirst has led to a current war, refusal to improve auto efficiency, denial of global warming and tax policies which favor oil interests.
Notice that Exxon still denies a connection between greenhouse gases and global warming and is the largest firm in the world. It is also (unlike several other oil firms) based in the US.
It used to be that the US economy was controlled by the oil/road building/rubber/auto sector and this may still be a big component. It is odd that the auto sector hasn't yet realized that their interests don't coincide with maximizing oil consumption anymore. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
Their internal inertia seems too enormous to overcome. Reliance on corporate welfare and citizen dedication ("buy American," which oddly doesn't apply well to other sectors) do not help either.
I don't know of any large companies that have survived a sea change in their operating environment (there may be some examples, it isn't something I give much thought to). Old, large companies have a hard enough time handling the inevitable cancerous creep of bureaucracy - companies like IBM in the early 90's serving as a rare example of overcoming it, at least for a time.
you are the media you consume.
