The UN sustainability index once listed Cuba as the only sustainable economy. Another year it was Ecuador. Cuba might be eligible again because of the embargo. My point is that you can't convince folks in rich countries to be truly sustainable and you can't convince the rest to not aim for a higher standard of living. Putin said something like that and he was right.
And we keep coming up with ideas to make it worse: blockchain and now AI.
Bingo. A lot of what passes for solutions are fairly anemic. We will swap out any technology for a similar less intensive alternative but the instant we have to actively change our lifestyle it is largely ignored.
It isn't because people are malicious, it is that people tend to normalize the conditions they are raised in even if they are wildly exceptional.
All individual solutions (“lifestyle”) are inherently anemic and impotent. You don’t avert an extinction event with public service announcements and solar panel rebates.
The only thing it is useful for is scapegoating (cf. this thread).
And we keep coming up with ideas to make it worse: blockchain and now AI.