Your analogy is flawed - in analogy to an ideal cap/trade system, the farmer pays taxes for borrowing from the future too - if he abuses his land in a way that harms the sustainability of his farmland in his children's time, he gets fined/taxed for it. So it does go into the equation RIGHT NOW.

You cannot say that online! Disgusting! I just spat chocolate ice cream all over the keyboard!!

What does that massive resource sink have on its list of achievements in, say, the last 30 years? Might as well give it OBL, at least he can do *something*.

That's possibly true, but sun reflection is much more of an issue closer to the equator where reflecting the sun will have a more pronounced effect. Even more so given the price in energy of producing concrete (I believe it's 1 ton CO2 per one ton cement, or concrete). So asphalt away, Canada.

Disclosure: I'm a pork-eating Jew (read: member of the Jewish people, atheist as the lot of you). I remember reading an article in an Israeli newspaper about genetically modifying food, and one of the things they checked is the opinions Rabbis have about its Kosherness. So one Rabbi they asked, which was also a biologist by training, said that it was perfectly OK to eat, for example, a tomato that expresses genes from a bug (totally unkosher, the latter). The reasoning: expressing bug-genes is, according to his interpretation of the Halacha, not substantially different then a chicken that pecks on the ground and swallows a bug. The bugs flesh is then incorporated in the body of the chicken, the same as the bug proteins are in case of the buggy tomato. Both are fine to eat (although I'm pretty convinced one tastes better...)