The Freakanomics guys think that the hand-wringing and solutions targeting the transportation and energy industries have very little impact in reducing carbon footprint. Both industries contribute little to the "problem". Consequently, the "solutions" end up having minimal effect. To boot, their research of the research shows that carbon is a very weak/inefficient greenhouse gas. Water vapor has a much greater impact on planetary warming/cooling.
Better to target methane. Ergo, targeting the feedlot industry (i.e cattle and poultry). Everybody going vegan would eliminate something like 70% of the carbon footprint. More bang for the brussel sprout.
Another solution proposed by Intellectual Ventures is shooting a relatively small amount of sulphur into the stratosphere near the poles, giving us an immediate world-wide cooling effect like what happens when a very large volcanic eruption occurs (i.e the Iceland eruption in 1815, Krakatoa in 1883, or Mt Pinatubo in 1991).
But as I've said, global warming, if it's really a problem, is a human-only problem. The phrase was coined by humans to describe an "issue" recognized only by humans that really only affects humans. Compounding the problem is the movement is populated with/popularized by liberals, who hate anything having to do with humans, so they couch it in terms of "saving the planet" because they can't be anti-human while simultaneously wanting to protect & save humans. That would violate their religion. And as any agnotic knows, religious nuts can never admit their religion is wrong even though it obviously is. All religions are like this. Not just the one you dislike.
There is only one solution absolutely 100% guaranteed to work to resolve this "issue" / "problem". Stop making babies! Less babies equals less demand on the entire supply chain - food, water, raw materials for shelter, safety, and consumption -> arable farmland, potable water, wood, rubber, oil, nat gas, coal, gold, silver, iron, aluminum, platinum, other animals/wildlife/sea life for food, chemicals, etc.
The population of all biological systems expand in times of plentiful resources, and contract when the resources are used up. Homo sapiens are no different. We're just doing what we're biologically programmed to do. Planet Earth can handle the gyrations of the human virus population just like it does with all the other biological population gyrations - without breaking a sweat.
A possible "entertaining" solution for the reality TV crowd - round up all the males aged 0-35 in the world, drop them into Africa, secure the border so they can't escape the continent, and tell them to have at it. Worldwide, it's estimated there are 2.2 Billion males aged 0-35 (see
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/region.php?N= Results &T=10&A=aggregate&RT=0&Y=2015&R=1&C=). Create a large-scale survival test. We'll call it "Survivor - the Lord of Flies Experiment". We know the series finale - everyone dies. Nice. Neat. Tidy. Unless they start porking the female wildlife, and creating nasty new creatures...
We only need 1 male for every 20 fertile women to ensure survival of the species. If we reduce the population by letting all the 0-35 year old males kill each other, then within the 50 years, the population will be back down to manageable levels (i.e 1-2 billion). Of course, in 200 years, they'd have to do the experiment all over again.