The issue isn't that drastic action is not/may not be necessary, it's that the vast majority of the population will not just 'give up on consumerism' for a perc

The issue isn't that drastic action is not/may not be necessary, it's that the vast majority of the population will not just 'give up on consumerism' for a perceived long term benefit, and any political attempt to make them will be met with a huge amount of backlash and instability. If a political party or politician proposed what you're saying, they probably wouldn't get elected. If they tried it when in power, then the next party who gets elected would probably withdraw said restrictions. If they tried to 'turn off democracy' to do this, then people would get extremely angry, probably revolt and there would be a huge debacle. Especially given that worldwide, it'd be seen as an authoritarian coup in a democratic society, and responded to with economic sanctums, anger on the international stage and perhaps a war/support for overthrowing the government. The problem isn't that such a dictatorship or authoritarian rule is necessarily against the long term interests of the population (though many authoritarian regimes (including China) would argue the same thing for their countries). It's that it's not democratic, not backed by most of the population and (perhaps rightly) seen as an alarming development in a country's history.