Who’s “we” and what do you mean by “livable”? There’s no mainstream climate model that predicts the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity. Even the worst case scenarios in well done models only show global growth slowing by a few percent without any climate mitigation. Meanwhile we have a carbon neutral technology, nuclear energy, that even with its problems can easily provide energy albeit at a higher cost than coal.

The predicted higher temperatures existed in the past and had some of the highest archeological rates of biodiversity. Thats not to say the outcome will be all positive; certainly some regions will encounter issues during the transition, but there’s also going to be a lot of opportunity opened up within the range of predicted outcomes by climate models. Increased agricultural production in northern regions, less cost of heating in many heavily populated areas, and of course new transport routes across the arctic. That’s not to mention all of the benefits fossil fuels are bringing to people much poorer than you in the global south.

"We" is "humanity." You, me, and everybody.

I didn't say "uninhabitable," although, yes, FYI, major climate models do predict certain areas becoming uninhabitable due to intolerable wet bulb temperatures. I said "liveable," as in "can sustain some modicum of semi-modern civilization." That's a far lower bar.

Meanwhile, we have a technology we literally cannot build enough of in the next 5 years to stop any of this from happening. And, if we continue to burn fossil fuels, once we exhaust them, we'll literally reach C02 levels not seen since the Cretaceous period, when temperatures were 10 C above the pre-industrial revolution era. How does that benefit the global south, or anybody?

I do not believe you have thought this through. You bring up so called "opportunities" forecast by climate change models, yet fail to consider that we're already looking at severe weather events such as floods, storms, and heat waves, that would normally be 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 events, starting to happen on a multiple times a decade time scale. It's not possible to build in the face of that; even insurance companies are recognizing that today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Thermal_Maximum

Most of humanity already lives in conditions you would consider “semi-modern”. I understand that change can be scary and that yes you personally will either need to adapt your expectations to live a comfortable semi-modern lifestyle. Or perhaps decide to seize the situation and make life better for yourself and others by providing goods and services that assist the transition and maintain your current luxurious lifestyle.

It’s funny to me when people point to weather events and blame climate change. Yes there will always be some place in the world experiencing extreme weather events, and climate change will change the distribution of extreme weather events so that some places become more extreme and others become more mild. I wouldn’t want to live in California ;-)

You hardly need to go anywhere near "the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity" before you run into pretty devastating consequences for significant percentages of the world's population. And even if we encouraged poorer countries to burn as much cheap fossil fuel as they possibly could to improve their standards of living, I very much doubt it would even come close to enabling them to mitigate against some of the worst sorts of natural disasters and weather extremes that are expected to be more severe and frequent as the planet continues to warm. Though realistically it won't be lack of cheap energy that continues to hold back economic development for much of the world anyway.

High gas prices and recessions are two of the best predictors of politicians losing elections. Degrowth will produce much more of both.

That has nothing to do with the merits of the solution, i.e. whether it will work or not. Meanwhile no alternative exists that will stop us from reaching 2C of warming.

It doesn’t matter if a solution is correct or will work, if it can never be implemented because it is politically impossible.

The ultimate conclusion then is that that political system will be broken on the wheel of physical reality. Adapt or die is a pretty blunt statement but it is nonetheless true.

I believed this too, until COVID. Millions weren't even willing to do so much as wear a tiny piece of cloth over their faces. If they can't even put up with that minuscule level of discomfort for the greater good, do you think they will ever make the sacrifices needed to slow climate change? No way!

No solution to climate change is politically viable if it means the general public needs to lift a finger. We know they just won't do anything, mandated or not. The ocean could be coming into their living room, and they will sit there, watching it, scowling about their political opponents.

We had millions of people literally willing to spread a deadly disease and die, just to irritate the other side. Not only will these people do nothing in the face of climate change, they will do whatever they can to accelerate it if they believe their ideological opponents want to stop it.

I think we're on the same page, I just meant 'die' in a slightly more literal sense than you probably took it.

And yes, it is incredibly sad. Somewhere in the last century we went completely off the rails to the point where we are now endangering our world and have no tools to do anything about it. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck, unfortunately both you and I are on the train and we can't get off.

The earth doesn't actually care about gas prices, recessions or elections and we either adapt or we will be adapted forcibly and with far less choice about the outcome.

Stop consuming what exactly? Shelter, climate control, transportation, food? It is not like Starbucks and luxury handbags are causing the bulk of emissions.

> Shelter, climate control, transportation, food

Yes, those seem like some good things to work on reducing the impact of.

Reducing the impact of those things by making people poorer is very different than reducing the impact by innovation. Degrowth is never going to fly.

Give me a better alternative that avoids 2 degrees of warming, then. Burden of proof is on you at this point. "Innovation" had 50 years to work, and did nothing to get us out of this.

That's not how burden of proof works.

It is, unless you think the last 50 years somehow didn't happen. We knew exactly what would happen then, and did nothing. Innovation, my ass.

Innovation so far is what made things worse, not better.