humans are selfish, and most of us are not willing to make major sacrifices to avert disaster
I am sick and tired of this cynical bullshit argument. It's wrong in two ways (and neither are the way you think):
It assumes that we have to reduce our standard of living in order to reduce our fossil fuels consumption, instead of innovating
It presumes that the lifestyle changes that we do have to make (e.g. higher density zoning and walkablity) represent some kind of deprivation, rather than the improvement they would actually be.