I once heard the back-to-nature approach deftly savaged as "abstinence-only decarbonization."<p>There is some low-hanging fruit to be plucked in terms of reducing consumption but the vast majority of the decarbonization effort should be focused on different modes of <i>production</i>. There are solid <i>quantitative</i> reasons to focus on cleaning up production instead of decreasing consumption, as well as the obvious political advantages. In 2014 the IPCC estimated that coal power had a median CO2-equivalent emissions intensity of 820 grams per kilowatt hour and that rooftop photovoltaic generation had a median intensity of 41 grams per kWh, 95% lower. So you could ask people to turn off their air conditioners in the summer, and if you convinced half of households to endure that discomfort it would actually reduce emissions <i>much less</i> than if everyone air-conditioned like before but via solar power instead of fossil power. Imposing austerity on energy services is a painful and not even particularly effective way to cut emissions.