You only need to look at the history of society at times in the past 150 years to see that's not true. People fundamentally reorganised around working in factories, owning cars, women going out to work, television, the adoption of IT, the internet, smart phones, and probably many more things within a few decades as soon as each thing was first introduced. Humans are amazing at adapting to rapid changes when we want to.

Humans are amazing at adapting to things that give them more of something.

What we need as a civilisation is people wanting less of everything, but that's really hard. People take things as given and if you even suggest taking away those things they get irrationally angry and dig down even harder.

> What we need as a civilisation is people wanting less of everything, but that's really hard.

Not very hard; there are several spiritual traditions which emphasize detachment from objects, e.g. Buddhism. But unfortunately, Buddhist countries don't generally do well militarily because of the focus on monasticism/pacifism. India was majority Buddhist in 6-7th century and arguably that made them vulnerable to the Arab invasions. Similar case can be made for Tibbet.

Consumer-capitalism is an economic system which depends on consumption from the working- and middle-class. It is not merely a lifestyle which is opted into.

But this always gets framed as changing the hearts and minds of regular people. Well my own prime minister was a bit upset that people were consuming less during the height of the pandemic. They wanted people to get back to “supporting small businesses” ASAP.

In my opinion people are working backwards. They are taking properties of money and project them onto humans rather than doing the opposite.

Economists say people have infinite wants and needs but really, in practice it boils down to a desire to constantly learn new things. The only reason why people may want an infinitely high amount of money ie. infinite wants is because there is no opportunity cost to holding money, humans really love having infinite free things and hate things that cost them something.

> People take things as given and if you even suggest taking away those things they get irrationally angry and dig down even harder.

What's irrational about it?

Especially in this case. People are being asked to drive less, when driving is currently a necessity in their daily lives. Meanwhile the upper class is flying private jets around.

Being asked to accept less in that situation should make you angry. And it isn't irrational.

But why would they want to give up their cars? The average human doesn’t value protecting the environment more than maintaining their lifestyle.

i thought my wife and i would always have our own cars. could never imagine making do with 1. but now i can walk to work so we don't need 2. and if we happen to need to go separate ways, i can uber. make transportation easy, and people will adapt/embrace even if they don't currently like the idea.

Not needing a car is great, but this apply mostly to people living in cities. I would love to walk to work, I would only need to triple my income or downgrade a lot my quality of life by living in a bad small apartment.

Right, definitely not everyone can do it. My point is only that opinions can change if circumstances change.

And 0 of those examples involve people being told to give up things they wanted.

It's not so much about giving up something they want but about giving up something that is fundamentally better than the alternatives (except of course for the externalities). It would be like getting people to go back to going to communal laundry facilities or washboards.

> Fundamentally reorganize human society

American and maybe Canadian society. There is nothing particular to humans that makes them car dependent, urban design, education and other such circumstances make them so. In some countries car dependency is the exception due to good public transit coverage (for commuting or longer distances with high speed rail).

Of course there's no silver bullet that will make everyone abandon their car tomorrow morning, but a lot of car trips can be cut with good urban design (including walkability, cycling, public transit), and for the rest that remain for whatever reason, EVs are a better choice, obviously. However focusing only on EVs and ignoring the rest is only opening another can of worms to replace the current one.

> There is nothing particular to humans that makes them car dependent [...]

Not dependent in the practical sense, but I think we are somewhat genetically wired for something related to long distance travel and/or the means to do so, or at least to move at higher speeds than we can on foot. There's the love for horses in (mostly female) humans, and the way car purchases are made is not at all driven by practical considerations only.

Transformation can make us less dependent on cars and reduce their use. It won't remove the desire to own and fully control means of transportation.

Luckily, the two options are not in any way mutually exclusive.

Lithium for e-bikes, golf-carts, trams and busses, taxis, ferries etc. are needed for the non-car-based city vision too, and the reduction in ICE pollution actually makes cities a nicer place to live.

Like when we chose B) and made our current consumer-capitalist society?

> Option B has a poor track record.

They both have.

Our current tech is way greener than what we had 100 years ago.

You seem to forget that 100 years ago it was also used much less.

billions of light polluters today is much worse than a couple of heavy polluters 100 years ago.

That is a different issue that doesn't have to do with tech itself. But I will also note that our population growth trajectory 100 years ago looked much more pessimistic than the one today.

Now I don't think any of this will be enough to avoid a major catastrophe due to AGW. But it's also clear from experience that, between tech advances and social self-control, the former is far more likely to happen at scale, and thus have any meaningful effect.