Comment by jillesvangurp

Using less is always an individual choice. But not a realistic one to expect 8 billion+ people to take. That's also why fossil fuel usage is still increasing.

However, you might be too pessimistic here. Fossil fuel usage is actually widely expected to peak in the next few years and then enter a steady decline.

Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg NEF did a pretty interesting editorial on this decline a few weeks ago: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/liebreich-the-p...

He uses a simple model with some very basic assumptions (conservative ones) where he shows how short term fossil fuel usage still increases. Mostly this is just market inertia. But then it will start decreasing and then some decades later, it declines all the way to zero with some long tail of hard to shift use cases.

He uses some very basic assumptions about economic growth continuing to grow by an average of 3%, a base assumption of renewables outgrowing energy demand increases by 3%, etc. You get to a modest fossil fuel decline by 2040, majority renewables powered economy by the 2050s. And virtually no fossil fuel left in the economy by 2065. The years change but the outcome stays the same as long as renewables outgrow demand increase.

There are lots of buts and ifs here but he's explicitly addressing the kind of pessimism you are voicing here.