I welcome you to propose a better solution than eco-fascism. I would be genuinely interested in hearing any other suggestions that could work.
Just saying "Let's all stop being nasty and live in peace" doesn't work, unfortunately.
These days, not so much. I believe in building communities via mutual aid and support, and that if people have their basic needs meet they will produce incredible results. People want to do good, but are often too tired or too afraid or too burnt out to do it.
1. Pour all your effort into becoming a kinder, wiser human, and watch as it rubs off on the people around you in surprising and far-ranging ways, amplifying itself into the world through "network effects."
2. Become cynical and bitter, and watch the opposite happen.
In either case, the world will present you with all the evidence you need that your way is the one true way and that everyone who sees it differently is clueless (though in the first case, probably not with so much disdain and contempt...).
This is such a insane way to look at it.
The constant fight for increased profit has offshored manufacturing and created a market for constant crap to buy. China isn't expanding industry in a vacuum, to suggest degrowth should only be for the third world, that historically was exploited for the growth of the first world, is honestly a crazy stance.
I like to tell people that eco-fascists are easy to spot, when someone says "we need less people", ask them who goes first.
The west has driven us to this current state for the sake of profit. We ship plastic bullshit across the oceans burning bunker fuel to shave 6 cents a unit off the margin.
The west has built a society so alienated and so dependent on endless, unsustainable growth. The perfect consumer is entirely dependent on capital for their every need. Yet you point out the issue is the third world looking for some dignity after a century of hyper extraction capital.
I saw a silly tweet today, it went "In a way, we're all in a rich dude's poorly designed submersible".
We're all dying for those bastards RPG min/maxing. The real path is anti-profit, durable long lasting items, and interconnected local economies.
Minor snag in your plan: "The West" cannot itself figure out itself "how to live". Witness Jan 6, 2020. And growing strength of Germany's AfD: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-far-right-afd-expands-politica...
Russian attack on Ukraine alone produced so much environmental impact it made the effort of your whole righteous life useless. Hell, if made the effort of millions of people like you useless, and it's still going.
You need to stop Russians from waging wars, to convince China from senselessly expanding their industry and to convince the third world from developing. That is what you need to work on instead of sleeping 8 hours and carrying a water bottle.
1) Create an authoritarian environmentalist religion and become its absolute leader. Gain absolute power over the minds of billions of people.
2) Create a single world Illuminati-like government and re-organise the whole world order, trade and civilisation.
3) Make the West so powerful it will finally destroy and conquer both Russia and China and dictate the third world how to live.
You don't like this solution? Well, then the planet is doomed.