The point of this essay is to make an argument for why so many people in this day and age have carbon output based neuroses, and how our views of energy production impact how we produce our society.
To start, global warming and climate change are real. But most people have a loose understanding of why energy production is causing climate collapse and mass extinction.
Solar energy (the steady flow of entropy from the sun, to the earth) gets stored by organic matter (typically through the process of photosynthesis). Carbonic organisms produced from solar energy end up dying. A tree falling over, a phytoplankton running out of energy to convert, etc. These lifeforms' carbonic structures of energy end up getting stored within the body of earth through way of geology.
These structures become "fossil fuel" and the release of their stored energy can be done at scale and lopsidedly compared to the carbon uptake ecology developed on the earth evolutionarily. The dispersed carbon in turn allows for more solar energy to be retained in the atmosphere as heat.
This is what is causing our current situation. And since almost all energy infrastructure is in one way or another tied to the extraction and intensification of carbonic energy, our society has grown neurotic in ceasing acts that utilize too much energy.
For some things this logic makes sense, yes it is wasteful to drive a solo occupancy vehicle to and from given areas. Yes eating meat not only is ethically bad, but also energetically. Etc.
But then this logic gets applied to everything. You have people feeling bad for warming and cooling their homes due to the process's acknowledgment of energy utilization. You get policy that makes construction seem negative because concrete production is carbon intensive. You get BBC articles on why wood stove burning in parts of Africa is bad for the environment (ignoring the reality of energy infrastructure in those regions). You have software on your phone that only charges at capacity "when the grid is green".
This Carbonic Guilt is no different from a Catholic's. It is no different than any other social imposition. It takes a situational reality and projects any energetic action done as sinful.
Coding every action into a moral framework tied to ego and self is such a singular anti-human perspective to hold onto. Energy production is done by a given collective social flows, producing organizational systems that interact with the body of earth. It isn't done by an individual choosing to keep their home cool in 40°C weather.
But thats the problem with a lot of our discourse, is the over emphasis on the individual instead of the means of production and our social relations towards them and the earth. Turning everyone into a morality pawn that is guilted and shamed into specific aspects of behavior is defeatism. Defeatism towards energy, towards change, towards the active construction of a better world. Our negativity shows paranoia, neurosis and psychic breakdown. Not passion, nor confidence, nor breakthrough.