It's not like consumers apparently CARE. They buy what makes them feel good. Or thinks make them look good to peers/friends, whether a Tesla, a Prius, or a 12 cylinder high end super expensive sports car (just to use cars as one example).
I was lucky in that I found and read, "Money and Class in America" in about '83 to '85, when still in my mid-20's. Due to my upbringing, I was already leaning toward ignoring class and economic competition of "who can display the most 'X' as totally stupid, but Lewis Lapham solidly finished the job for me with this book.
I remember the example of the lady in NYC unhappy with the $1.5 million entryway to her mansion she'd just had refurbished to impress her friends -- in $1980ish dollars. And the intro on how the executive was claiming he was practically "starving to death" on a $250,000 income a year (again, in 1980ish dollars), due to all the status stuff like a house in South Hampton, huge travel budgets for the kids, fancy new cars every few years (ALL deemed as absolutely essential), that he claimed he had no money left for food.
"What are the odds that I can compete (or want to compete) with such people, much less billionaire tycoons?", I thought. Zero. So I resolved to ignore ALL that sh*t and just live in a way that made sense to me, re consumerism.
No muss, no fuss, no pressure. The secondary benefit was it acted like a natural screen for friends. The kind of folks who were dismissive of me because of my clothes, old car, tacky apartment on the bad side of town (but 5 minutes from work!) were folks I knew not to spend time and energy trying to be friends with.
Only 30ish years later did I truly realize how much the planet would benefit from the vast majority of people taking a similar attitude toward consumption as status or virtue.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.