A commenter at Tim Worstall reminds me of a cunning masterplan I developed in a moment of idleness some years ago. If the problem is that a load of carbon stored in an inert form under the ground has been converted to CO2, then the sensible solution is to get it back into an inert form again. Luis Enrique, puts it thusly:
It would appear to (ignorant) me that a good way of reducing atmospheric C02 would be to replicate the process of how it got underground - i.e. growing lots of trees, cutting them down and burying them as landfill and growing more. repeat. Which is kind of why I no longer care about buying paper from managed forests then chucking it in the bin. Am I making an error here?
I must say this looks flawless to me. Maybe we don't need send our economy back to the dark ages.
So it's OK! We're not doomed after all!