I don't want to belabor the point, particularly since I largely agree with you. However, I think your opinion is extremely unscientific. Cherrypicking specific examples is not a good idea. What about changing consumption habits to consume art and theater rather than offroad vehicles? The list of potential substitutions is vast and would provide plenty of examples where consuming less is more - or less - effective than consuming differently. As for "engineering our way out of this crisis" I agree with your point, but it is misplaced. Calling for changes in consumption habits does not necessarily mean engineering our way out of this crisis. And consuming less can be just as engineered as consuming differently. You need to define what you mean by engineering our way out of this crisis. I also believe technical solutions can help but will not solve environmental crises, but that can apply to all changes in consumption (both scale and type).
As for the data analysis you suggest, I'd warn against picking specific binary comparisons such as you list, since these are merely selected cases out of a virtually unlimited number of possibilities. Instead, I'd focus on specific policy alternatives that are actually being considered. For example, many people call for re-using plates, utensils, and cups instead of disposable ones. But reuse requires use of water, and that can have its own serious impacts. Since this is often a real policy change that is enacted, a careful analysis of disposable vs reused dinnerware would be valuable (and interesting and difficult to do). Similarly, if people travel less (as you suggest), we need to ask what they are doing instead. If they are staying at home and buying gas powered toys, then it isn't clear that their environmental impact will be less - it all depends on what they are doing and where they are doing it (in both cases). I think these questions are amenable to quantitative analysis - but fraught with many difficulties.
