alt Hacker NewsA fairly basic economic principle is that demand is infinite. It's a derived concept from the fact that demand is driven by desire- both need and want. The less personal sacrifice required to get something, the more people will want it.
It's far from an axiomatic truth, but it's a good enough approximation to point out that "Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people" is an absurd bogeyman here. If it wasn't, everyone would be living in shoebox apartments, would never travel outside their neighborhood in their mega city, and our diets would consist of the least possible energy intensive foods possible- probably a soylent style powder that is shelf stable and doesn't require a great deal of refrigeration or preserving.
We don't live like that because people don't really see how taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment, and we keep living in our individual houses because we don't like apartments, and so on and so forth. Properly insulating those buildings requires polymers for things like weather sheathing, plus insulation for electrical cabling, and so forth. All of these little inefficiencies and uses for polymers add up to the simple truth: we're not going to hit CO2 reduction goals on the basis of individual action, and we're not going to stop using plastics.
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> taking a 5 minute car ride round trip to the grocery store instead of a 40 minute bus ride round trip is worse for the environment,
1.) I walk to a shop cause that is the easiest way to get there.
2.) If the difference bwtween a car and bus trip is 5 vs 40 min, the bus system majorely sux.
Basically, you described situation where people settled at bad uncomfortable setup and consider it "good enough" for tradition reasons.
I lived in the Netherlands for a bit, where I used to do a bike ride to the grocery shop.
Now I live in a more car-centric place where the only practical way to do grocery shopping is by car (unless I am to walk back to my house looking like a pack mule). I am not brave enough to ride a bike on the road.
If I were to choose, I vastly prefer the bike (not even for environmental concerns, it was just more pleasant). But things just aren't built that way.