Hacker News seems to have interesting collective beliefs such as that it's easier to go to Mars than to turn off the lights when no one is in the room.
My lights use 8.5 Wh apiece.
The notion that consumer savings will make a dent in our problem has a few problems with decimal places. This is, by-and-large, a capital-driven problem. It's probably true that a reduction of individual consumption of stuff would be more beneficial than our energy use, too...but then that creates a new problem for that capital, too. So not only is avoiding the collective-action problem probably easier, but it's more effective, too.
2. How many aluminum smelting plants are there? How many light bulbs? The decimal places seem to go the other way.
This Wikipedia page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters -- lists a bunch of aluminum smelters. While it says it's incomplete, its existence implies it has most of them. I doubt there is a page listing all the light bulbs. Once habitualized, turning them off takes negligible extra time or effort.
3. I don't mean to be flippant, but are you arguing against conservation?
This chart is old, but has a nice quick visualization of where you might want to focus.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/publ...
At least showing that for residential use, upgrading your AC, refrigerator, etc is probably higher impact than focusing on lighting.
2. OK. Aluminum smelters and oil refineries and frigging box factories and everything else. Start summing up. Those numbers don't show what you want them to show, I'd wager.
3. I'm arguing that it is a hell of a lot better to go after the people who actively benefit from disproportionate use because they are causing the deepest externalities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Ze...
Aluminium per year: 720000GWh
20W (100W equivalent CFL) Lightbulb on half the year: 87.6KWh
Aluminium = 8.21917808 × 10e9 lightbulbs
Probably wrong in many ways, but I'll post it here anyway.
Then again your lights used 40-60w apiece just few years back.
Going to Mars requires a large organization (or a bunch of them) creating significant incentives for people to work on that goal, i.e., paying $bignum to many employees and suppliers - or it's not going to happen.
In the exact same manner, practically reducing energy consumption would require a large organization (or a bunch of them) creating significant incentives for people to reduce consumption, e.g. governments enforcing a significant carbon tax that raises the cost of electricity so much (or some other policy that brings visible, practical impact on each particular individual depending on their actions) that untold millions of people will be strongly motivated to change their habits - or it's not going happen.