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Agree for sure but I think it is disingenuous at the least to say that the ‘pain’ of reducing resource usage intensity will effectively fall only on the shareholders of 20 companies.
NickCJ-
I think it’s pretty ridiculous to lump “western consumers” and the “US Department of Defence” together as if they have equal power.
As @Oliver Schick rightly says, and as always with more eloquence than I, it’s a complicated web of supply and demand. But I disagree with your dismay at the idea that change must be made from the top. This issue is absolutely skewed in that way. I’m not saying it’s just the shareholders of those 20 companies – it’s an elite business class, dealing directly with governments in hundreds of millions of pounds, to do everything they can not to allow change.
What does it matter if western consumers all want fully electric cars right now in 2019, if the car manufacturers have no intention of actually making affordable electric vehicles and the governments no intention of creating the infrastructure required? We can make some choices and choose not to drive at all, ride share etc but we do not have equal power. Capitalism ensures that we do not have equal power.
The Guardians in depth series this week has been really great if anyone hasn’t seen it yet. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/the-polluters
Fyoosh
Also, how much lobbying do you think those 20 companies have done over the last 50 - 60 years? The political landscape has been shaped by the political and economic clout of these corporations and that’s not something they can wash their hands of by pointing at the consumer and saying ‘hey, we were just supplying a demand’.