I think there's a bias in public discussion towards idealism, because most discussions will start by the argument that we need to reduce X, or we need to reduce

I think there's a bias in public discussion towards idealism, because most discussions will start by the argument that we need to reduce X, or we need to reduce Y. If there is a conflict and there needs to be a trade off, very few discussions and points will be about the tradeoff, but there will be a whole bunch of discussions about just plain reducing X or reducing Y.