There needs to be a discussion about economic incentives. It's not people wanting things that is the problem. It's that it's easier and more profitable to produce short-lived crappy things that can be sold for cheap, because the environmental impact of the waste it generates (both CO2 and the actual crappy product itself) is not sufficiently factored into the price.
I would not be surprised if, in our current economic system, simply having more green energy available (or products produced without emitting CO2) is not going to solve anything. With almost 8 billion people on earth, we'll find ways to increase consumption and burn it.
So far global output of wealth and well-being is directly tied to emissions and consumption of fossil fuels. We have a 110-year long precedent for that. You could even argue it started with the Industrial Revolution, so the period is longer.
France is probably the only example of a country that came close enough to decoupling economic prosperity from CO2 production through Nuclear energy, but even they produce 5GT of CO2 per person.
It also isn't particularly evident that Nuclear is reproducible worldwide - it is very expensive, and Uranium is also a finite resource if you were to multiply its use by a factor of 10x/20x, etc. Remember, France is less than 1% of the world's population.
So decoupling prosperity from emissions is pretty much the panacea everyone wants. But it's unrealistic to hope for it and expect it to come in on our timeline. Kind of like fusion.
5 GT (5 000 000 T) is unfathomably large. They produce about 5T = 5000 kg CO₂ / person / year, which is 5 · 12 / (12+2·16) = 1.4 ton of carbon / coal or 1.7 m³ = 1700 l of diesel.
Going by Wikipedia 2017 list[1], they are about 5% above average per-capita CO₂ emissions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
I'd say that's a pretty good track record for creating prosperity.
And yes, thank you for the correction, GT was the wrong unit.
Please don't forget to qualify you mean economic prosperity. It's a wholly different matter than happiness, health etc. The correlation is positive (I guess) but far from 100%.
French track record is not bad, but I would still hesitate to call it good. Going by [1], they haven't notably decreased their emissions since 2011, they are worse than Sweden and Switzerland, and if poorer countries follow, it's still the kind of emissions that take us into wild climate territory with mass migrations, unrest and I would hope not war.
Good for some inspiration, better than my country, but far from enough.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
As far as I understand we have a red button that will induce a nuclear winter
The atmospheric CO₂ rates come from burning too much fossil fuel. Not from people wanting things. If you consume and produce things in a way that doesn't release net CO₂, that is perfectly fine from a climate perspective, even if the products are meaningless artefacts of a materialistic life that will never make you happy.
I understand the impulse toward a simpler, less materialistic life. If you like that, argue for it on its own merits.
> The best thing I can think of then is to lower the temperature of the earth
That... is not an action you can take. We don't have that lever. It's a goal of the whole climate change issue. So this is saying that to lower temperatures, we need to lower temperatures.