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.
I don’t really have feelings towards it. Your analysis is obscured by rose-colored glasses.
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.