And my entire point, is that after 30+ years of trying to reduce emissions by adding renewables we have failed to see this happen. There is no evidence that we are getting any closer now. If any global fossil fuel usage had decline, we could say it might be being replaced with renewables, but all evidence we have shows that renewables just supplement our existing and growing needs for energy.
To go with your metaphor, we've been asking everyone to be quiet for 30+ years and the room is getting louder. If we need that room quiet or we'll get kicked out of the house for good, it's getting time to ask people to leave.
And we are, today, at the point where we can deploy them. Around 2016-2018, we passed an economic inflection point for new energy deployments, and in 2023 we will have been through the five year periods over which utilities typically plan, and hopefully we will have sued enough of them to force use of accurate and up to date data in their economic planning models.
Only then will we actually start to try to use renewables to decrease emissions in any sort of full force.
And with the tiny trial balloons up until now, and via increased energy efficiency, we have been increasing GDP per CO2 for years, despite your refusal to believe the data.
These are basic facts. If your conclusions requires rejecting basic facts, then the conclusions are not sound.
The underlying phenomenon here is not economic activity. It's that a decrease in economic activity is a proxy for a decrease in things such as pleasure transport, heating/cooling, food consumption, and other things. Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about; for example, taking a train and walking for a vacation requires much fewer emissions than flying to your destination and renting a car. It may be in vogue in environmental circles to decry growth and capitalism as two factors behind emissions, but there's nothing that precludes growth or capitalism to transition into a new lower-power regime. The problem has nothing to do with the economic systems as much as it has to do with entrenched economic actors that continue to aggressively lobby governments to convince them _not_ to pass the regulations necessary to spur innovation to decrease emissions.
To leave with a pithy saying: There's two ways to quiet a crowded room, either ask everyone to speak quietly or ask everyone to leave. Halting growth is similar to the latter option, decreasing emissions is similar to the former.