> The radical change I'm referring to is the drastic cut in energy consumption to make renewables work at our current scale.

Unnecessary. You’re thinking linearly. We don’t need to cut energy consumption, it will be met and exceeded by the current exponential growth of renewables and storage. The “we have to do less” crowd are wrong and bad at math.

Aviation isn’t a solved problem yet but that’s still less than 3 percent of fossil fuel sourced greenhouse gas emissions. There are far more pressing concerns like banning domestic fireplaces.

I would be more concerned about the ocean shipping industry, one which is just screaming out for nuclearisation, but of course that would be protested by ignorant faux-environmentalists who care more about telling others what to do than what’s actually good for the planet. (For some light entertainment, read up about fractional distillation and learn about exactly what it is most cargo ships burn. It ain’t avgas, that’s for sure. But nobody cares because intercontinental trade doesn’t work as well as commercial aviation as a target for class warfare.)

> That means doing less things, which no one plans on doing.

No one plans on doing that right now. But once we divert the attention of astrochemists away from studying the terraforming of Mars and towards the intersection of politics and sociology, I’m sure they’ll come up with the solution.

> it seems we are not on the right trajectory

It would seem that way if you think linearly.