It’s all fine and good for John Kerry to utter a fundamental truth about a major driver of climate catastrophe, but it is a useless proclamation without offering a solution.
Have enough tipping points been breached that there are no prescriptions to offer?
Well, do I have some bad news for you! The world population isn’t projected to peak until 2080, but the U.S. population is projected to peak in 2052 (<30 years). We have one generation to figure out the alchemy of prosperity under population stagnation.
FWIW: there’s nothing written in stone that says you must have growth to sustain capitalism. A shrinking labor pool can be replaced with improved efficiency (i.e.: AI & automation). A shrinking consumer base can be replaced with increased per-capita consumption (i.e.: more consumerism). Love it or hate it, capitalism in an extremely adaptable system that will readily adapt to changing tides – necessity is the mother of invention.
Or you can just abandon some of your old productive capacity. Depending on how you define capitalism a market with private ownership but little investment might still count.
Get rid of the taxes and the growth requirements are way down. Technology seems to have stabilized and we are now realizing that the whole internet boom was a bubble.
I don’t really have feelings towards it. Your analysis is obscured by rose-colored glasses.