It's a typical strawman. An average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine. One would argue that this needs to happen for us to really make progress on reducing emissions. People blame "corporations" and "the rich", but it's like blaming a Mexican cartel for making drugs. They wouldn't make them if there weren't any buyers, and unlike with drugs, pointing out that people just buy too much shit is not "victim shaming".

I'm not talking about any kind of "victim shaming" here. Just pointing out the fundamental fact that thoroughly breaking economy is game over. Think for a moment why we want to fight climate change? It's not because of some deep love to the pile of space rock we happen to inhabit.

I was addressing the problem with ideas that people should "just stop doing things", or that we should be drastically reducing consumption, or halting economic growth. These things, "consumption" and "growth", aren't just luxury goods and high valuations of bullshit companies. It's peace and prosperity and a hot meal on the table. It's scientific progress and all the technologies needed to fix the mess we've made.

Since bring up blaming: sure, "an average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine". But good luck making them do that. When dealing with climate change, we need to talk about what's possible, not about what would be possible if we were living in a fairy land where every human is a perfectly rational actor prioritizing good of the many over the good of the few, and coordination problems didn't exist.

I agree with you that standard of living is an important thing to maintain for things to actually gain any traction. But first world standard of living is carbon-heavy and fundamentally at odds with the environment. I get downvoted every time I point this out, but it's true. Avocadoes and fruits flown in from Mexico and Chile year round are problematic. Eating meat every day is problematic. Chinese shit that breaks in a month is problematic. New phone every year is problematic. 3000+ sqft house is problematic. "Traveling" is problematic. Luxury cars are problematic (even Tesla - according to an estimate by Swedish researchers, even before you start driving, your Tesla has already emitted up to 17.5 _metric tons_ of carbon dioxide - you need to drive a gas car for 8 years for it to emit this much).

So no, not "stop doing things", but not buying shit you don't really need would be a good start.

I think you are overlooking that the US has optimized policy for this excess consumption in areas like capital formation, agriculture, labor, healthcare, etc. If there was different policy the economy would reallocate capital to other purposes.