I suppose I have the wrong attitude, but I don't see why I should cut my already comparatively modest lifestyle and environmental footprint while those doing the lifestyles of the rich and famous thing keep on living it up. I reckon bring the wealthy demigods down to the level of us ordinary mortals, and then I'll be happy to match any further cuts or austerity measures they're up for.
Austerity measures for the poor while the wealthy lay back and laugh their heads off...no thanks!

It's like having a conversation with a pet parrot. Make it more expensive, make it more expensive, polly want a cracker? Then they'll use less; then they'll use less?
One thing we don't need is Guitar amps and P.A. systems; burning what most would use in a week, in an hour; or multi millionaire advocates, living in upmarket exec homes, telling us to use less!
If some of the less well off used any less; they'd be living in the dark cooking over camp fires!
18 cents for something that costs 3 to make and or 6 to deliver; is a 300% mark up. Price gouging that has nothing to do with environmental outcomes?
If it did it would be made locally for half the carbon output and one full third of the price. i.e. 1 lousy cent per kilowatt hour; from methane produced by digesting endlessly available biological waste!
Biological waste, biological waste polly, will we ever run out of it? Ceramic fuel cells silently turn this biogas to electricity on demand; and, produce free domestic hot water a a by product! even when the sun don't shine!
Oh yes; the more we pay for energy and everything dependant on energy dependant production and transport; the less that we have for discretionary spending; the more contraction we can engineer into the economy; the fewer jobs there will be, less taxes paid; the fewer services, even fewer jobs and on and on, with industry grinding to a halt and former industrial hubs reduced to rust belt wastelands.
Its a good plan and it very nearly worked in Germany, when the Greens there held the balance of power and the govt to ransom?
Sound familiar?
If you want clean green power at a price battlers and the economy can afford? Vote for those representatives, willing to buck the system; to get it to you? And for mine; it's none of the current crop of party political posers?

The author is correct in maintaining that environmentalism has morphed into a snobbish cause.

There are more educated people in Australia than there has ever been before. In 1900, university educated people comprised only 2% of the population, today it is 15%. But the question of what class status these educated people fall into, is an open question.

Many graduates are business people, doctors and engineers, and these comprise the sucessful business or profesional classes. These people are considered succesful and are clearly part of the Establishment. Then there are the Artz graduate types who flout convention and champion left wing causes.

What is resulting is a new class of people where bourgeois and bohemians are all getting mixed up together.

The defining attitudes of this new class therefore become a blending of two opposites, social climbing superiority mixed with Socialist Egalitarianism. It is now fashionable to appear lower class, as long as your attitides define you as upper class. Clothing is their uniform, and it is sort of funky prole. Designer stone washed clothing mixed with $50 Guggi T shirts and Sure Footed Sherpa hiking boots.

People like Julianthenutter and csteele are desperate to show their social superiority over the great unwashed, and to the patrician class as well. So, they adopt causes, attitudes, and artistic tasted calculated to get up the noses of both classes.

People like these two think that they are oh, so ferking clever and that their views are the height of moral and intellectual attainment. Unable to be defined by wealth or status, members of this new class are defined by attitudes. They are not just politically correct, but politically exquisite. Devotees of this new class affirm their membership by their continued devotions to "progressive" causes.

They can really get worked up over the environment, but they have raised the concept of racism into the Eighth Deadly Sin. Any heretic who breaks ranks over that one will see a social fatwa put on their heads like the mark of Cain, and they will be caste out into the lands of the unclean suburbinites.

...And Lego:-

...Here above you stated the case so eloquently; but I feel you only “half-stated” the overeducated miss-fit class and their contribution to Political insanity in this country. The other half of the equation hides under the unfolding banner of “neo-Humanrightst”, a banner under which all unattainable warped ends of environmentalism, will touch the free flowing ends of quasi-Human rights issues, and connect the dots of Yuppi-madness: A madness obviously helped along from too many hours sucking “Bongs” in the parlour with their like-minded mates.

Gandhi perhaps said it best:

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

You just need to look to this comment section to find plenty with an entitlement mentality (and a few decent comments)

Believing the science and decrying the continual environmental destruction I witnessed every day by "ordinary people" we made a definitive decision to make a change, going from a six figure income to a modest income (about the same as a pensioner) from prior investments 2 years ago.

We moved to a cheap rural area, are off the grid for electricity, water, sewage, generate all our own heat from an efficient slow combustion heater and solar hot water system and grow lots of our own veggies and meat. The time spent ensures our income is low, thus forcing you to further reduce consumption, brilliant. We go into town (60km round trip) once a fortnight (grocery bill is about $60 - $80 a fortnight for the two of us) and have so many activities at our front door to enjoy; hiking, camping, cycling, rafting, that all require little or no money. My partner works part time and cycles (20km round trip) to her work.

Here's a shining example using a more urban approach.
http://www.happyearth.com.au/

Shopping at a Supermarket designed to fleece those on a middle income has nothing to do with saving the planet and all to do with marketing.

We need icons like Henry David Thoreau lauded, rather then Steve Jobs and his ilk.

Thanks for the perceptive article, Elizabeth. The reality of the world we live in is that only the moderately well off and rich who can afford to change their lifestyles to reduce their impact on the planet. The best/worst example is PV solar electricity, where you needed a minimum of about $3000 to install a roof-top system that might save you $600 per year in electricity. That's not a particularly attractive pay-back period for people earning $25,000 a year or less as the article states. But there is so much that average and lower income people can do to reduce their impact on the planet - drive smaller fuel efficient cars, live in smaller better designed houses, install a solar hot water system and roof insulation, replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, etc - but the messages aren't getting out to them because we have a federal government committed to almost meaningless 'big picture issues' such as the carbon tax while state govts want to be seen doing something that the media find 'newsworthy' such as raising then lowering their electricity rebates for PV power while ignoring the more basic but far more cost effective actions that just about everyone could implement with ease.
Unless being an environmentalist becomes affordable, little will change over coming decades regardless of whether we have a carbon tax or not.