Hard disagree. More energy is the way to grow our society and lift everyone up. If it’s renewable or nuclear I see no good reason we’d want to reduce.
Energy use is not in itself creating any value. It's a cost for value creation. More energy available can allow us to make more value, sure.
If only there was a word besides "hard" for this situation
With nuclear power, eventually you'll add so much waste heat added to the atmosphere that it will be worse than greenhouse gases:
If we continue increasing energy consumption at current rates and cover it with nuclear power the ocean will boil in 400 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4
Obviously that's not meant to be a serious scenario. But it's illustrative.
I don't see the problem of lifting everyone up while using less energy. We just gotta be smart about the solutions we make, rather than just brute-forcing it by using lots of energy.
Like: I prefer to bike to work. That makes my life better. I also prefer living in a walkable/bikeable town. If I'm forced to drive a car the energy associated getting to work will be very high. If I can use an e-bike it's a tiny fraction, and I get to exercise without wasting time in a gym.
Renewable energy isn't really renewable. Wind energy still requires oil and mining, and dams disrupt river ecosystems. Nuclear produces toxic waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years.
Our society has gotten into an incredible mess with more energy usage (e.g. climate change).
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510187...
However when things are going well for the hunter-gather they did have a lot of leisure time and so they could well be happier overall even though the lows were worse.
Personally, I would trade the lows if I could live in a world where most technology did not exist (that would mean in particular, I could drink from any stream or relax without hearing an ICE.) And no, that does not mean going off into the woods now, where the experience would be vastly different, being surrounded by advanced society.
There are places in the world where you can get away. there are still hunter-gather tribes around, and some of them would welcome outsiders to join. (some will kill you on sight) You can also buy land in middle of nowhere Alaska (or Montana) where effectively there is no civilization in anywhere close. I'm not sure what country you live in, but odds are there are options where you can just disappear for civilization if you really wanted. While you can get to civilization from the above if you want, it wouldn't be hard to avoid it.
Not sure why you say going to the woods now is not an option. There are enough people choosing to do similar things (ex: Amish style of people). Nowadays we have more options in terms of life style than at any point in history (not without some tradeoffs, but still). You have to make a choice and make your peace with it, don't think it's productive wishing you would not have the options...