I don't know how much surface area you consume, but the single biggest cause of energy use is spread out living in detached single family homes in the USA and other developed countries.

All the recycling, solar panels, electric cars, whatever don't come close to making up for the fact that each family of 4 living on a 0.1+ acre lot with all the various setbacks and whatnot, commuting many miles to work and school and grocery stores and the gym, moving all that mass of people, students, workers, food, water, sewage, trash, gas, etc is orders more consumption than if people were living in dense arrangements such as apartments in 4 and 5 story buildings.

Energy = Force * distance

From what I can tell, none of it means anything as long as detached single family homes are still the expected lifestyle, at current populations. Might as well consume as much as we can while we ride into the sunset, or cull the population quickly.

That's great but sounds about as effective as slacktivism.

The majority of people sacrifice nothing. They won't move to a 1000sq or less apartment but instead want their 2200sqft suburban house. They won't move the place where they can use public transportation, they just keep driving their car everywhere. They won't stop flying around the world on vacation. They won't give up upgrading their phone every year or stop owning tons of clothing. They won't change their diet to eat whatever is most environmentally friendly.

Instead, they just blame the electorate. The electorate just responds to demand. Same as industry. Stop buying beef there will be no beef industry. Stop buying cars there will be no car industry. Stop buying things from the other side of the world there will be no shipping industry.

People keep expecting politicians to somehow magically do something but are usually unwilling to do anything more than separate their trash or once in a while, bring a bag to the grocery store they just drove too.

Yea, all of that is hard. But if you're not willing to do it, what makes you think the electorate could possibly pass anything no of their constituents is willing to do?

> Industry, electricity, and transportation

This is deflecting the problem. All of those are in response to demand. People live in suburbs instead of centrally so they need all their own personal transportation and product transportation. They want all their clothing, toys, BBQs, lawn chairs, smokers, jacuzzis, tents, gadgets, etc so both demand for industry and demand for transportation to bring that stuff to them from all over the world. And, they want all the electricity for their large 2200 sq houses (double the size of many other countries).

China is the number one burner of coal and other dirty fuels and only growing. This type of disingenuous analysis really sets the wrong understanding of the world.