We also want everything in single use plastic containers and to drive big cars a mile down the road to buy groceries, but there's better solutions for those things that people are buying into more and more.

I'm not saying human convenience should entirely take a backseat to machine efficiency; to your point, the very existence of these things is to make human life easier. My frustration is that Western approaches to these problems seem uniquely resistant to ever altering behavior for the sake of reducing ecological impact.

(Dishwashers were a poor example for me to use anyway, they're remarkably efficient; a better one might be water usage: it's best to water plants in either the early morning or late evening, so the water doesn't evaporate as much, but people often prefer to do so during the day, which coincides with high household water usage for showers/laundry/whatever. though, I routinely run my dishwasher overnight and have never had issues with grime, so long as I prime the hot water feed.)

People want all sorts of things. Somewhere there’s a limit to what you can actually get in a finite world so that your kids and grandkids aren’t left with a lower standard of living because they have to pay for your externalities, never mind all the other damage to the ecosystem. Washing dishes when you want is probably okay, but dishwashers are remarkably efficient and really a red herring, or a motte-and-bailey type argument. Wanting to own, say, a massive F150 for the convenience of having your own personal tank and feeling better than others is probably not okay.

Then they can pay the higher rate for energy during the day, and if enough people want this it will be practical to build infrastructure to support them. This issue is they want it and they don't want to pay for it.