Much of this stuff is about marketing to people's "feelings."

So often it's about making people "feel" like they are making a difference more than actually making a concrete, tangible difference. And about politicians making it appear that they are "taking action" so they can get re-elected.

The place I worked just took down all it's 6-year old T5 fluorescent light fixtures (already very efficient and still like new) to put up slightly newer LED fixtures because the "sustainability committee" got money from the power company and they wanted to do it. What a waste.

Meanwhile, down in the boiler room where nobody sees, the building is cooled by a chiller from 1991 and heated by a gas-fired boiler from 1979. Obscenely inefficient, but no one cares because they can't see it or don't understand how it works.