The much-maligned automobile, for example, is responsible for only a small fraction of the greenhouse gases blamed for the current reputedly unnatural warming trend. Each year, there are about 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from all sources. In general, then, an effort to prevent CO2 from getting into the atmosphere by restricting mobility and retarding industry does not appear very promising as a means of reducing the concentration of that particular gas. The cost would be huge and the results minuscule. A better approach might be to focus on strategies aimed at absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Plants use it as an input to their growth.
Consequently, a strategy that promotes plant growth would act to convert carbon dioxide into vegetative biomass. Growing more trees, harvesting mature wood and converting it into durable wooden products, and replanting new trees would promote a sustainable cycle that would remove CO2 from the air and reduce whatever contribution it is, in fact, making to global warming. But just as environmentalists of today crusade to decrease CO2 concentrations, so the same folks crusade to recycle paper, without even considering that one goal may be counterproductive from the point of view of the other. Putting discarded paper products into landfills where they will be buried and prevented from oxidizing in itself reduces carbon dioxide output. Further, it stimulates the use and replanting of more virgin timber for the production of more paper, which would contribute to the strategy of converting CO2 into biomass.