> What area would it take to produce several GW that a few reactors would produce?

Out of curiosity, I tried some napkin math on this. If Nevada went whole hog, used say, 1% of their total land for solar, they could produce almost half the electrical needs of the US, if I haven't mucked up the math too much.

Sounds plausible, but 1% of Nevada's land for solar would indeed be 'all the way to the horizon' in many places.

That number is a bit low, but area for solar panels will never be in short supply, because the same land can be used as is used for other things.

I looked at a 2GW nuclear facility, and it's about 1 square Km. The reactors aren't too big, but there a lot of auxiliary buildings as well as parking for many employees. I know one building is a training facility that replicates much of the primary facilities, and there is a lot of space dedicated to security either with actual structures or buffer zones. There are also PR/education facilities on site, presumably so the local municipality doesn't eventually vote them out. Somewhere they store fissile material.

It's also on the coast for access to coolant water.

It seems very difficult to place huge facilities like this with all the staff and security requirements on waterfront property when you can stick a solar panel on or next to just about anything.

let's assume we can scale renewables+nuclear fast enough so that our civilisation is not damaged too much by climate change.

let's also assume we stabilised biodiversity and avoided a mass extinction.

should we continue to produce massive amounts of energy so that some can commute by plane daily and others can stream cute kitten video in 8k?

If we can continue producing them in a renewable or at least sustainable way, why not?

If the only way to keep that up is burning oil, then no.

Please also note that some of the most intense producers of CO2 are poor(er) countries which burn coal because it's cheap. Even natural gas can be too expensive for them, let alone solar or wind installations.

I wonder when the West would consider buying and converting such plants. It's likely feasible in Africa, hardly so in China.

If all that were true, I'd say definitely, we earned it. Make it a 80k kitten!