Americans love to fool themselves into these naive, moralistic tirades that lead nowhere. Take the issue of teen pregnancy, for example.
For decades, the American approach was to wag their fingers at teenagers and tell them to not have sex (similar to how we currently wag our fingers at the developing world and their use of oil). Meanwhile, in Northern Europe, they focused on making contraception widely available for teen girls via state run healthcare programs.
Fast forward 50 years and the US has 6X as many teen pregnancies per capita as a country like the Netherlands. Ignoring human nature and focusing on moral appeals doesn't work for sex, and it won't work for consumption either:
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescent-pregnancy-a...
If India and China will not join you every sacrifice you did was essentially worthless
Reducing is strategic. Efficiency, such as bio-degradable straws and most newer technologies like you described, is tactical.
I covered this in part in my podcast "episode 183: Reusing and recycling are tactical. Reducing is strategic": https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod....
I'm sorry you think reduction is misguided. Your appeal to human nature opposes hundreds of thousands of years of human history before the past few thousand.
Is it possible the reason humans in the past didn't consume as much, was simply because they lacked the technology to allow them to?
If you gave a human from 10,000 B.C. a private jet, while also telling him that jet is bad for the environment, that human would still be flying all over the globe in an instant.
I don't think humans were somehow more morally conscientious in the past. And I'm not sure we should be aiming to head back to those "glory days" of 20 year lifespans and terrible infant mortality rates.
There is no lack of incentive for this to be invented. The global airline industry is approaching 1 trillion USD in revenue. Climate concerns are not the thing that will provoke innovation here.
Besides, "fly less" is infinitely more tangible. When you become aware that skipping one intercontinental plane (round)trip has the same positive CO2 impact as going from moderate meat consumption to veganism for one year (!) you might weigh your travel options differently. I know I do.
Your framing of the solution as "Humans need to change from growth to enjoying what we have" is wrong. This is diametrically opposed to human nature--you're literally swimming upstream on this one. It's not going to happen.
If we look at the solution in a way that harnesses the natural tendencies of humans to compete with each other and seek better lives for their children--you could describe it as the following: We need to find newer, more environmentally friendly technologies, faster. This is the Elon Musk approach, and he's proven it works.
Instead of spending billions of dollars on public education programs to eliminate plastic straws, why not direct that money toward inventing bio-degradable straws that are cheaper than plastic? This is absolutely doable.
Instead of telling people to stop flying to visit their family, why not work toward creating more fuel efficient forms of air travel?
You're misguided if you think wrapping yourself in the self-satisfied flag of "do-gooder" and shouting loudly at people to join you is going to have any meaningful impact.