alt Hacker NewsAt least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers.
As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.
Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.
The car-centrism of the USA is IMO because people like the convenience of being able to go where they want, when they want, and not waiting for a bus that will take an indirect route and twice the time. People also like living in their own house with a fenced back yard and not having neighbors on the other side of the wall/ceiling/floor. This means we're more spread out (we have lots of land) and mass transit is less practical.
In dense urban areas we do have good mass transit and it's relatively more common for people to not own a car.