> Less oil? Working on it (see: solar).

And failing at it, oil use is still going up

> Less food? Working on it (see: /r/progresspics, and all the science and journalism on this, soda bans, etc).

And failing at it, see worldwide obesity statistics

> Less cars? Working on it (see: Waze, Uber, Lyft, public transit, et al).

And failing at it, see the meteoric rise of motorization in developing countries

> Do you suggest that China didn't try population control at scale for generations?

Are you suggesting it was a success, and didn't cause a huge gender imbalance which is threatening to cause social strife?

>And failing at it, see worldwide obesity statistics

This is more of a food quality issue than a food quantity issue. The strict hypercaloremic hypothesis is one that really is ready for retirement (and more or less has been retired in research circles).

Why did nobody notify me that the law of thermodynamics changed?

It is not physicially possible to gain weight when you have a caloric deficit. Where would it even come from?

The laws of thermodynamics have not changed, but try examining a really-really-really-really-really high dimensional phase without getting tendrils/'tubes' that appear essentially random w.r.t. prior conditions. How would you know the direction of a volume of phase space with fairly significant perturbation across all the variables that can change?

A flippant counter-example: eat only carbohydrates with a 1000 calorie deficit, drink 5 liters of water daily- 0 additional calories. How would you not gain water weight? Doesn't that count also?

I don't think the obesity problem is due to lean body mass (which water weight is)...

They haven't.

The body is not a closed system.

The laws of thermodynamics tell you your caloric equations have to be balanced, but the internal state of the body can alter behaviors such as feeding and moving, so appealing to the laws of thermodynamics is pretty much off-topic. It's a common fallacy, and you're not alone in committing it. Obesity is increasingly seen as a metabolic disease with behavioral consequences rather than the other way around.

Here are two arbitrary papers I've blindly pulled out of the google-scholar hat, both of which discuss aspects of the issue at hand. Much has been written on the subject, and I respectfully urge you to investigate further.

1. http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ncpendmet0220...

2. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2...

Also, if you're going to be sardonic, you really should make sure you're not missing anything...

>And failing at it, see the meteoric rise of motorization in developing countries

In contrast to popular opinion, cars are one of the greatest equalizers on the planet.

Before cars, who gets to enjoy a nice Sunday morning at the beach?

The rich with beachside estates. There aren't too many busses going there at random hours of the day.

Without cars, how would the poor get to a national park?

Practically, public transportation only works when you want to go where the crowds are.

If you want to stand out, you've got to take a car.

Soda bans are not the way to go. If you're referencing the large soda ban proposed in NYC, I'm glad that atrocity was ultimately rejected. There are better ways to combat health problems than going down the road of telling people what portions of food they are and aren't allowed to buy. That legislation was especially hamfisted in that it attempted to target movie theaters - the law potentially being that if you want soda throughout your movie, either hope you can take up two cupholders, put it on the floor where it could easily get knocked over, or miss part of the movie to go back to the concession stand for a refill.

I don't want to eventually live in a world where I'm only allowed to order 8oz steaks (with the fat helpfully removed by law in case I got funny ideas about eating some of it) and small fries. It's a serious issue that people take that soda initiative as some kind of good thing.

Less transportation, less devices (instead of upgrading every year, how about using the same phone 5 years in a row?), don't eat meat, generally just reduce consumption.

It does not count as less consumption if you replace oil with solar. Replace it with a void. Whatever activities you were doing that required energy, just don't do those things.

We could do a lot better if we just lived like the 1600s.

"We could do a lot better if we just lived like the 1600s"

Sure, nothing like a bit of plague and disease to thin out the population a bit.