...methinks you may have to reconsider some of the things you said in your post after you take a look at the following page...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
...what you will find is that what you see as trivial items account for about 60% of average household electricity...our gadgets soak up a great deal of power...for instance the wholesale shift to flat-screen tv systems in Britain ( as an example ) would require the power output of 4 additional nuclear generating facilities...here in Canada the free gift from one particular province of more efficient appliances to all of its citizens would have saved the taxpayer there a huge amount of money over the cost of nuclear power stations required to provide power for old style inefficient appliances...
...and you may also consider this...the use of electric cars if it becomes widespread would function more or less like a huge battery system that would use off-peak generated power that is now just wasted....as result oil consumption may either be scaled back or put to more efficient uses...
...and as long as I have the floor there is one more little tidbit and it concerns how pigheaded we are with energy use in North America...when the first oil crisis hit, everybody noticed the immediate effects such as long lineups to get gas ...different counties responded differently...America did virtually nothing even though their oil production had already started to fall off...Germany instituted some efficiency improvements that if applied to the US system would have allowed the US to be oil self-sufficient...the Japanese went further than the Germans and if those efficiencies had been used by the US, the US would have been a net exporter of oil...
..we had the opportunity to be smart and do better...but no, we went hardcore and now the accumulated debt of oil importation is going to bring the whole house down around our ears....yeah but we're hardcore...yeah like in cheap steak tough and bonzo substantial....
...Earth Day is a much as anything a bit of a wake-up call to be a bit smarter about energy use than we have been...there is still a narrow window of opportunity to save ourselves but its closing real fast...
Cheers
blutto