You need energy to make things. Houses, roads, cars, food, many services. Basically without energy you are poor.
Having energy is not enough, but it is necessary to be rich.
We want things that are the same but less intense, or that are much better at a fractional increase in input.
And we really need it if we want a planet worth living on fifty years from now. So to ignore this desire is dangerous.
Compared to just 50 years ago, I would say that our lifestyles are on average vastly more consumptive, despite being more environmentally aware. We seem unwilling to make the sacrifices that really matter.
I think that some time in the future, our time will be seen as one of massive entitlement. As technology makes things possible, we feel entitled to make use of it if we can afford it. How many people in the 50's were using trucks to drag boats and horse floats around in the suburbs? These are the kind of reasons people will give for their consumption. e.g. "this is the lifestyle I want, it's possible, and why am I not entitled to it if I can afford to pay for it?" (in the financial sense only of course).
We have nuclear power (and soon nuclear fusion) - we can completely decouple energy production from environmental damage.
And trying to force degrowth on populations just makes matters worse, as their economy collapses (Europe), or they resort to even worse forms of energy production like deforestation and wood burning (Sub-Saharan Africa and remote South America).
We just need to use nuclear power.
If you had a magic wand and created 100 TW of nuclear power tomorrow then the papers would fill with stories about Heat Pollution.
I did the rough math [0] and we get 10x as much GDP out of each kg oil equivalent used as we did in the 1970s when the article bemoans us falling off the HA curve. That was one of my core problems with their point, the amount of energy used is not directly tied to the economic value of the output.
Perhaps this comes down to a quality of life vs GDP per capita not being identical. While I could use more energy to consume more, I don't have a very strong desire to go much above my current level of consumption.
But outside of the wealthy there is still huge latent demand for energy and what comes with it.
Not sure how much energy a garden can use, could you elaborate?
I was wondering if there was any way to bring 10.000 Einsteins online. Einsteins who know all about physics, programming, math and so on, cranking up ideas days and night. If the Einsteins never sleep, that would be ideal.