Whats your suggestion exactly, and what's a realistic trade off that you think will have dramatic impacts? Economic nudging I think can do some things, certainly taxes and gov't investments (i.e. build a nuclear power plant, people don't care how they get power largely as long as they get power). We have people recycling a generation later even though it's annoying but now that's supposedly terrible among environmentalists anyway so you can do some things I grant.

But if your plan is decrease global consumption (not even per capita, just absolute consumption cause the environment doesn't care how many people there are) X% it doesn't even matter what that number is you will fail.