I don’t see where you get that implication. Perhaps they’re spending a month in France rather than taking three one-week trips. Perhaps they’re living closer to town so that they don’t drive as much to get to work and their local hacker club. There’s lots of ways you can reorganize your life to be less resource-intensive without meaningful sacrifice, especially if you’re starting from the immensely wasteful late-20th-century-middle-class lifestyle.
All you have to do is take on less flight in your life to make a huge impact. The carbon output per person of a round trip flight from NY to Phoenix is 806 pounds.
It's one of the best decisions I've made. I have more adventure, culture, cuisine, and other values I used to get from travel, without the pollution and emissions.
I haven't been in a plane myself in 4 years. I got months without getting in a car. I'm up to my ears in adventure.
But it's not enough, right? We're completely dependent on cheap sources of fossil fuels to drive our economy. How much carbon is released in the atmosphere from just me eating food?