This is all very well except for some major caveats. First we have extreme conditions such as droughts, 40C+ heat and severe cold snaps. Frugality may be self defeating ... should the vegie patch be allowed to die or the frail have to tough out oven-like conditions? Secondly we're piling people into the lifeboat, some 0.4m in 2012 I believe. They will completely erase energy savings of the frugal.

Thirdly transport energy makes a mockery of household electricity savings. A litre of petrol has the equivalent of about 10 kwh of thermal energy. Note that most electricity uses about 3X as much thermal energy input as the nominal electrical output. A Sunday afternoon drive or interstate wedding via plane or car erases weeks of savings from frugal use of domestic appliances.

Conclusion.. we need plenty of energy so long as it is clean.

Of course we should try to save energy personally, but the normal motivation of thrift and satisfaction or financial gain is quite adequate. We don’t need to be saving the planet; the result is the same.

The real issue is that the amounts of energy so saved, or apparently saved, are trivial compared with the total energy needs of the world or of our part of it, pretty much as Taswegian notes. The arithmetic would be easy enough but for starters a useful approximation is to use money as a rough proxy for energy (certainly true at a national level). Then compare how much households could save via this kind of thrift with Australian GDP, in the trillion dollar region. It will be a tiny fraction. Next problem is that the money we might save through domestic energy thrift is then available for some other kind of goods or services, and that means a more or less equivalent amount of energy. We each account for energy more or less in accordance with our expenditure, which also generally means our income.

Valerie alludes to unsustainable houses with advanced technical features. Yes, their additional cost usually makes a nonsense of their supposed ‘eco’ credentials. Most will never produce a net saving of energy over their lifetime.

At the risk of seeming ageist Valerie:

Your solutions are certainly in tune with the good old days and subsequent "lockdown" of life's pleasures.

Your suggestion of steadily shutting down physical movement and staying indoors certainly has a correlation with age.

A cynic might think that never being born, never buying a "motor car" and clocking out at the good old days 70 average age of death is the answer.

Also not seeking energy intensive hospital care might save a few carbons while speeding the end.

Far more energy efficient than living in the energy wasteful good old brick veneer detached house is living in a teeming apartment with a couple of generations of kin.

Isn't that right?

The article is an example of simplistic 'feel goodness'.

All the individual yearly savings by people in NSW would literally go up in smoke at Sydney's New Year firework Pollutionfest, let alone the extra emissions by the power stations an they meet the surge in demand by all the electric trains needed to get the pollution activists home, add in the cars and buses and the figures may reach 'impressive'.

For the rest of the year there are all those city buildings with unnecessary lights burning at night, railway signals burning bright when no trains are running, street lights in many country towns which are a source of danger for pedestrians etc., etc.

Yes, greater than what individuals can do are massive users of energy such as armaments and transport. Nevertheless, waste is in every area of use and can be reduced.
I did not make comments such as staying indoors!
Many of the comments do not refer to my article at all.
Ozideas

If we are serious about reducing emissions the most effective method would be to tax the end user.

By doing this you effectively drive up the price which forces consumers to limit their usage, which in turn reduced demand, hence reduces carbon emissions. But the punters won't have a bar of it because its always either someone else's fault, or someone else's problem.

Another option is to reward consumers for good practices such as reduced rego fees for low KM on their cars, or reduced energy charges in the form of rebates if they can show they can reduce their consumption, a sort of 'below the average usage rate' scenario.