As long as you (and the Democratic Party) are honest about it during elections. I’d love for you to say this publically, see how the American people want to suffer and go back to a lower standard of living so that you can feel better about yourself.
Are your politicians prepared to talk about the real welfare queens in this country, the truck-driving rural population whose lifestyle is propped up by oil & gas subsidies?
I don't grasp this sentiment. It's clear it's not about feeling better about oneself but being preoccupied about a materially predicted catastrophe that can tear the fabric of many societies if left without action.
Even if it means lowering some standards of living for a while, and spending money to move us out from the high consumption of fossil fuels, it's worth it long term both in economical and social aspects.
You don't want a world where social strife due to mass starvation, mass migration, destroying societies that want to protect themselves from the potential millions that will seek refugee elsewhere where they can have food, is possible because it would be a little bit inconvenient to some of the richest folks on Earth. Those will also cause massive economical impacts, broken supply chains, less supply of some raw materials, more protectionism from nations wanting to hoard resources, wars between nations when water sources move borders or disappear altogether.
Yeah, there might be some inconveniences that are required, but previous generations had to deal with much worse inconveniences: wars, famine due to crop failure, etc.
It sounds really entitled to be offended by being asked to not drive your car so much, shop more locally produced food (and even stuff in general) if possible in your budget, change some ways of business to not require so many flights for simple meetings, so on and so forth.
There are lots of low hanging fruits, there's also massive societal changes required, we should be brave enough to be inconvenienced a little to avoid much more suffering in the lives of our kids, grandkids and so on.
Debated by whom? The laymen that are way out of the scientific consensus without anything apart from "I feel this is bad because it inconvenience me"?
The scientific consensus is pretty clear on this topic, unsure why uneducated people feel they should have a say in it...