If we are serious about tackling climate change then we need to decarbonize these other sectors by moving them off of fossil fuels and onto clean electricity. We are going to need to generate a lot more energy, not less.
Because reducing energy use reduces quality of life at constant dollar income (at least medium term), and reduces economic growth (energy's an input in all economic activities), with all the social negative consequences that produces. It's a third rail, politically. No one's going to get elected by saying "your children have to live worse than you".
The Western world is already (slowly, over decades) reducing this (look at per capita energy use dropping nicely since the 90s), and there's significant pushback even at this rate (gillets jaunes, cost of living protests). All future energy use growth is elsewhere (Africa, China, India) with no plans to stop and if the Western world tries to impose their views on them, it'll look a lot like neocolonialism for environmental reasons.
Cars are more fuel efficient than ever. I own an SUV and average 30.1 MPG. Imagine that in 2000. Light bulbs are overwhelmingly LED these days. New homes are much more insulating than ever. Smart homes are less wasteful.
Smarthome might theoretically work, but as of right now most people are just throwing even more IT and IoT devices, constantly drawing power, into their homes. As these come from a myriad of different vendors, there is no unified platform to utilize and manage all that for electricity efficiency, it's just going on, drawing additional power.
But is it obvious? Let's say that fusion becomes commercially viable and vast amounts of emission-free energy become available cheaply. Would reducing the usage of it still matter? I would say the driving factor is the side-effects of energy production by current methods, not the energy itself.
I think this is because energy consumption is directly related to our ability to manufacture things, and the ability to manufacture things is directly connected to both wealth and military power.
(I’m half-remembering someone else’s explanation, so I assume this is an oversimplification).
And that's ignoring the reality that if you make something 10x efficient, it tends to become used more - sometimes much more, cancelling the gains. Our economy is self-regulating; altering one factor only makes all others readjust to compensate. Permanent change will require more complex approach.
Energy efficiency is definitely a very important part of dealing with climate change, but it isn't a silver bullet.
We need to get off this exponential! Any modification of Capitalism is painted as an attack on basic human freedoms so that the rich can go down with the ship, rather than pass it on for the rest of humanity and the world.
How do we change what we optimize for? Because it currently isn't working.
> 10x efficient, it tends to become used more