So how do you suggest we act in a world where energy usage ultimately has to be limited? Just let the market regulate that?

Then you end up with luxury villas with swimming pools in the desert while farm land dries out and people die of thirst. If you grow a system against stiff bounds you will get hard saturation effects. And that means you can't have it all in such an environment.

Now using that drought-example I think it is reasonable to say your pools have to stay empty, priority 1 is drinking water and priority 2 is farm land. And if you are the type that would like to fill a pool in that hypothetical situation you probably deserve to be shamed.