[nicoburns]

> All of those things are, as you point out, built on the back of cheap energy

Well yes, but much, much less of it than if everyone drives everywhere.

> And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it.

All else being equal, then sure. But all else is not equal. There's a significant cost to producing all of that energy. And it is not likely to be feasible to sustain the entire world at US (or even European) levels of energy usage anytime soon. As such, it's quite reasonable to start having a conversation about what high-energy usage activities we might be able to cut out without having too significant an impact on quality of life. Things like reducing meat consumption (not necessarily cutting it out entirely), reducing car usage, and cutting down on air travel, etc are obvious candidates for this.