> But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address t

> But why should we have to reduce our “consumption” (by which I take it you mean material possessions and activities) if we literally CAN use tech to address the emissions problem? Reducing “consumption” ought not to be a goal in and of itself! In the mid-run, allowing for unbounded consumption makes you hit resource elasticities more quickly. In the long-run, it's possible to hit an elasticity you can't recover from, because you've overpriced a critical resource which would have been necessary to innovate away from what was constraining your current level of consumption. The result is a major crash. [0] Slowing down consumption makes the rate of change manageable and can ablate these shocks. Counter-intuitively, emphasizing more efficiency over less consumption can raise the total cost of consumption, as it just increases the room to grow and the potential diversity of the economy. [1] People take those things as "goals in themselves" even when doing so ensures that on some timeframe they'll get a lot less of them. If they expect it to occur after 80 years or so, they don't give a shit. It's a no-win scenario that can only be matched either by physically improbable super-abundance, or a temperance of individual expectations with quiet, lean living. [0] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom%E2%80%93Brookes_postulate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom%E2%80%93Brookes_postu...