Energy use has undergone some significant changes. At first, humans provided the energy for all of their activities. Food was hunted or gathered and did not require much additional attention. Agriculture and animal domestication resulting in increase energy needs that were provided by humans and animals. Wind and water were harnessed in limited quantities as was the burning of wood or other items. Not until the late 1800s was coal and fossil fuel used extensively. The high energy density coupled with increased efficiency made these viable for transportation and other work.
Today we use huge amounts of fossil fuels. Some areas are easy to transfer to other usages. Electricity production can be switched to renewable sources such as solar and wind. However, these sources do not provide continuous power. (For instance, solar does not work well when there is high demand for evening cooling.) Other areas are more challenging. Jet fuel is a dense source of energy. We don't have an alternative that is sufficiently light to power an airplane.
The more hidden area of fossil fuel consumption are more challenging to uncover. Plastic and fertilizers produced from fossil fuels are heavily used in agriculture. We are able to feed a large number of people with little human effort thanks to these fuels. This has enabled most of our population to live in cities and be part of the "information economy". If we immediately removed fossil fuels from agriculture, much of the world would starve. There are changes that can be made to reduce fossil fuel dependence, but they are difficult to scale to a large population. Reducing meat consumption would reduce grain needs. Going back to traditional agricultural practices result in reduced yields and require more labor.
Our buildings, gadgets and devices all require energy. Concrete and steel are the backbones of production. There are huge amounts of energy required in the extraction of raw materials and production. There are many other elements that are integral to the production and use of our modern products. These need to be mined, transported and processed. These are located in different parts of the world. There is also a large amount of energy that is needed simply to produce turbines or solar panels.
In addition to understanding energy use, it is good to understand probabilities of various events. We tend to be very bad at overestimating the likelihood of extreme, rare events. For instance, the odds of being killed in a terrorist event or a mass shooting are much lower than that of being killed in a car crash. Novel pandemics happen with some regularity. The probability of death is higher with older people, yet older people already have a higher probability of death from other causes. People that die in pandemics often have other comorbidities. We tend to focus on the novel thing that we can't control even while we fail to put efforts into the things we can control individual.
Scientists have known about climate change for over a century. Only recently has it been hyped as an existential crisis. The fear mongering often results in unrealistic solutions. There are extreme arguments on one side and denial on the other. Expecting society to meet a target based on a model may be unrealistic. Would we just stop concrete production and let our infrastructure fall apart? We would need many people in the cities move to farms, only there is not enough land available. Recapture solutions would be huge undertakings that would suffer from the typical problems of large infrastructure projects. Solutions must be global. Patting oneself on the back for reducing carbon emissions does not help if other parts of the world are increasing emissions. We also can't expect one part of the world to not want the comforts that another part enjoys. It will take understanding to come to a solution.
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