I just have not found an elegant clear way nor brutally honest way of describing what most people have not grasped: that: we are burning too much fossil fuel and that there are no examples that either show putting the fire out without replacing it with a machine that also uses more fuel in the combination of using the machine and using energy manufacturing it. Burning clean energy such as gas or biomass does not get us there. It still produces CO2. No asymptote. Why is this so hard to explain?
Making energy use more efficient liberates energy for other uses. There seem to be no examples of where saved fossil fuel leads to unused fossil fuel. It is just put back in the market and increases the total amount of fuel being used, It seems never to be permanently pulled off the market.
Economists should without hesitation impose Jevon's paradox, that increased efficiency leads to more use. Why do most avoid this?
It seems that the assumption is that we must lie in order p preserve the existing economy as an absolute none negotiable need.