Higher living standards are directly correlated with higher energy and resource consumption.

Unless you're living in a far distant village or in the middle of the woods producing everything you use, you're using an immense amount of resources in your everyday life.

Recycling, not buying the latest tech and curbing your diet don't make any significant dent into the amount of resources you're indirectly consuming by simply living and being active in a well-off, first-word or even "second-world" society.

Nah. I moved from Canada to Japan last year, and my quality of life has increased at the same time that my consumption has decreased. Correlation is not causation.