The car manufacturers wrote the zoning laws that turned America into a car-dependent hellscape. The oil barons lobby against every single initiative/bill that would reduce consumption of oil. In absence of government directives/incentives, people will simply do what is cheapest which, in a system designed by capitalists, is environmentally-unfriendly consumption. You seem to think that everyone who doesn't want average global temperatures to rise should simply stop consuming goods, but doing that on a scale that will actually change anything is stupidly unrealistic and possibly cataclysmic for our current economic system.