The US could make the world cut its CO2 instantly...with a simple tariff on imported goods that produce a lot of CO2 to manufacture.

Put a tax on anything made at a Chinese factory that pollutes...it will:

Add revenue to the US
Punish Co2 emitters
Level the playing field for domestic/local US producers

is certainly Chinese emissions! Why, if it weren't for China and the rest of the developing nations, we wouldn't have this problem. jabailo is right--it's time for the US to take action against the world that has balked at following our leadership on the climate problem. China and Africa and Asia have all the money, let them use it to work on the problem.

is doing nothing leadership?

Just a small problem with the "tax the chinamen" theory, and that would be the WTO. See, the US and most of the western industrial states insisted on removing the kind of targeted tariffs you recommend. Without getting into the minutiae, the US would have to apply the tariff evenly across the entire producing world. While that's still possible, pretty soon we return to tariff wars.

First, we must insist on environmental protection in general and limiting carbon emissions in specific in any WTO-inspired conversations. Of course, that has to be done in tandem with UNFCCC negotiations. You see the complexity.

And the post by "mwildfire" is certainly novel in its revisionism. The rest of the world is now balking at American climate change leadership? And Africa now is a creditor continent and, along with the Yellow Peril, has all the money?  Am I just missing the air of sarcasm here?

We face a number of environmental challenges in the US from stormwater runoff, fragmentation of habitat, and fisheries, to toxics in our water supply.

What we don't need is to be wasting limited resources on reducing or taxing CO2 emissions.  There is simply no evidence that there is any connection between CO2 and global temperatures. ZERO.  There is only a theory (greenhouse effect), which bears little resemblance to how our atmosphere functions.  For a greenhouse to actually represent the earth's atmosphere, it would have to have great big holes in its roof and have large fans and sinklers that go on and off.  Conversely, more CO2 in the atomosphere will increase crop yields and increase biomass.

The only thing that controling carbon does is give more power to governments, financial gains to bogus carbon offset companies, and invests our resources in unproductive technologies such as ethanol and windmills.

Feasible additional energy sources will arise if politicians and environmental groups would get out of the way and stop pretending that they know what will work.  We have possible new sources in algae, wave propogation, and magnetics to name a few.

So can we get back to focusing on real environmental problems?

is a real problem relating to global warming.  The most recent information I have read is a study of the algae layers in Arctic ponds which are now exposed (due to global warming) and which show that changes in CO2 concentration within those layers connect positively to climate change variations over many millenia in the past.

 The bad news is that very minor changes in the amounts of CO2,250 parts per million, are related to major interglacial periods.  This is much less than the 450 parts per million which scientists have predicted to be the tipping point.

As an aside, is Georgia related to jabailo?  Certainly seems to share his pov.