Yes, you're right, too often we do things that seem like a good idea but are actually counter-productive. (If that wasn't true we would be living in much great

Yes, you're right, too often we do things that seem like a good idea but are actually counter-productive. (If that wasn't true we would be living in much greater comfort by now.) E.g. those little florescent light bulbs? Worse for the environment than incandescent, because the environmental overhead of production and waste management outweighs the benefits of the greater efficiency. That doesn't mean that we should keep using incandescent bulbs. They are ridiculously inefficient (for one thing they put out much more heat than light. They are technically heaters that emit light as a side-effect.) It measn we have to think a little more deeply and clearly about what we're doing. We're going to have to make some major changes if we're going to avoid disaster, and "we" here means all of us.