Paul Greenburg: A New Year’s climate diet

Most diets fail. They fail mostly because after a period of bingeing (for example, New Year’s Eve) we set unrealistic goals for ourselves to radically reform our bad ways. In time, self-control breaks down and we hunger to throw open the cupboards and binge again.The same is true of the American carbon diet. After a period of bingeing (say, the last century), the United States is per capita the most prodigious emitter of carbon dioxide among the world’s top 10 economies. The average