As far as consumerism, I think a lot of it is driven partly by corporations desperately trying to avoid us ending up in a post-scarcity society; inducing artificial scarcity by emphasizing fashion and planned obsolescence is a great way to capture what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On top of that, certain resources are either naturally or artificially constrained, which lets the owners of those resources collect rent, again capturing what otherwise would have been excess wealth.
On a side note, I don't have air conditioning, and my house gets much warmer than 30C in the summer. Anywhere above about 32C is just plain too hot for me to do anything other than lay underneath a fan and drink water, so if I need to get work done I go to a coffee shop. At 15C I put on a sweater and am fine down to about 5C (assuming I'm sheltered from the wind). My wife, however is shivering under six layers of blankets and 3 layers of clothes at 5C, but is perfectly chipper up to about 35C. It's lucky we don't have thermostats because we already argue about when the windows should be open!
[edit]
About the clothes dryer... I live in a semi-arid area now, so I understand how clothes lines could work. I grew up in an area where much of the year at least one of the following would apply:
1) Raining
2) over 90% humidity
3) below freezing
clothes lines in those conditions were more than a minor inconvenience.
I hope as you do that humans start limiting their population. It seems to me that we can either breed un-controllable and have the maximum number of humans living awful lives fighting for scarce resources; or we can control our population and have less humans living happy sustainable lives.
Thanks to technological advances, those living today have been blessed with plentiful resources, which has meant most of us have had happy lives. Read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for what happens when resources run out - in almost all cases, humans start literally eating each other within a generation.
And you are right on the standard of living too. We can (and most of humanity does) have very happy and fulfilled lives with a fraction of the resources most western people consume. Go and knit a sweater/carve a spoon/write a poem, instead of watching the Kardashians (or Cardasians!).
Second - how do you propose this without being "King of the world" ?
Africa has a population growth rate of 2.53%, they will double from 1.2B to 2.4B in <30 years. The world population growth of 1.13% still will DOUBLE in less than 70 years.
Just the fact that the world's economies are based on debt requires that there is an exponential increase in growth to support the interest.
I've thought about this issue a lot and without some kind of dramatic (i.e. catastrophic) change, I don't see the status quo working, nor the 'carbon taxes' which seem to be a lot more of the same.
If you consider declining energy ratios like ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested) or energy produced per global capita, we should be hitting these limits repeatedly over the next 50 years.
In order to stop growth, you would need to halt population as well as have a debt jubilee, I don't see either of those happening. You'd also have to tell most of the people in developing nations that they will never have the riches that the west currently enjoys.
I'm not sure how you achieve those goals without war.
1) You need to invest in poorer countries and lobby their governments to improve the condition women (possibly doing both at the same time by essentially bribing governments). This should naturally reduce population. You simply need to push the natural child bearing age out to 30. If you allow women the economic ability to resist getting married until they are in their late 20's this will solve the problem. Like I said, it can't be done quickly. It might take 100 years, so let's make the next doubling of population the last.
2) There is some misinformation about economics out there (from personal experience of being misinformed). I recommend reading some text books on the subject. The main thing to keep in mind is that interest paid is entered into the money supply. Interest is necessary to maintain inflation. Debt as money creation removes barriers to growth. I seriously have no room to explain further than that.
I'll leave you with one more thing. From about 1600 (slightly after I think, but I can't recall when) until the mid 1800's it was illegal for most people to cut down trees in Japan (because by the year 1600 almost the entire country was in danger of deforestation). No wood, no coal, no oil, no electricity, and virtually no animal fats (legally "vegetarian"/pescatarian society) for 250 years. The next 100 years will be dramatically easier than that was and Japanese people still praise Edo society as being one of the most cultured in history.
My point is not that our current rate of consumption is sustainable (it's obviously not). My point is that the alternatives are not necessarily worse.
Reception varies widely. Overall, I have seen that rural and semi-urban population is more receptive than the urban. Most urban population has a consumerism-driven notion of "standard of life" that can not coexist with any practice of economy that disagrees with it.
Bored, educated people with some free time seem to innovate the most; as opposed to who is paid to do it.
It might change the direction of innovation, but I'm not certain if that is good or bad. I'd love to cut down on the innovation done in advertising or algorithmic stock trading.
1. We don't need to sustain this many people 2. We don't need to sustain this standard of living
The first one is pretty straight forward, although it's going to take another 100 years to sort out (barring a major disaster). Shifting child bearing years from the early 20's to the early 30's and changing cultural habits so that each family has only 1 or 2 children will do this for us. However to fix this problem, people need to be willing to share the wealth of the world a little bit more equitably. Improving the situation of women around the world has to be a very high priority as well. But if you look at what's happened in the last 50 years or so, it's pretty impressive. I actually have a lot of confidence that we will reach a slightly declining population within the next century. Either way, I just don't see a problem. Fixing this issue will make the world better, not worse. Obviously there are difficult economic challenges to consider, but again I think if we solve them it will only make life better for everyone.
Standard of living is similar. I think we're probably going to have to cut back a certain amount. But I don't think this is bad in any way. We're used to doing things like driving anywhere we want to go in a personal car. But if you go to Europe these days you will find that many cities and towns have opted to do away with cars in their town centres. This reduces some convenience, but massively improves the centre of the town. It means you have to park on the outskirts and either walk or take public transit into the centre.
Likewise we can get rid of a lot of things we don't need. I would literally ban clothes driers if I were king of the world. What a useless waste of energy. You are very slightly inconvenienced by having to hang your clothes outside. Of course you can't do that immediately because many apartment buildings have no access to the outside. Again, over 100 years we can dramatically improve this situation.
Other things are the way we heat/cool/light buildings. Why should it be 21 degrees C every single day inside regardless of the weather outside? What the heck is wrong with having seasons? What's wrong with having a night time? Some people would obviously rather have it the way it is now, but given that I personally live with an apartment that goes above 30C in the summer and below 5C in the winter, I can attest that it doesn't dramatically affect my standard of living. In many ways I prefer it. I was in Tokyo a few weeks ago. There are many more people on the streets in Ueno at 2am than at lunch time. Yes, it's fun, but is this really essential to our culture? Do we really suffer as a society by having to sleep during the night?
Most of our energy usage is in manufacturing and transporting things. We may have to do with less. But imagine if goods were 2 or 3 times the price they are now. Suddenly there is a reason to make higher quality goods with craftsmanship. If energy is priced higher than labour, suddenly there is a reason to train people to do a craft/skill. Suddenly there is a reason to buy a frying pan and not throw the damn thing out until well after you are dead. Seriously, do we need to buy crappy furniture, cooking utensils, clothes, etc, etc and replace them every 2 or 3 years??? Is this really a higher standard of living?
I remember reading a small book on the ecology of older cultures. You would buy 1 or 2 nice sets of clothes. When they got worn, you would wear them for every day use. When they got too worn for that, you would cut them up and make cleaning rags out of them. When they got too worn/dirty for that, you burned them for heat. Is this really worse that having a closet full of clothes from 30 years ago, waiting for a revival of that style? Good grief, clothes end up in land fill and we manufacture brand new rags for cleaning which also end up in land fill. It's almost criminal.
Enough rant :-) Like I said, from my previous rants on the subject, I realise it is not such a popular viewpoint, but I invite you to consider that dealing with constraints does not necessarily make your life worse. We're spoiled to a certain degree and having to do without has the potential to let us grow as a culture.