Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd put a stronger argument: if everyone suddenly stopped doing stuff, the global economy would collapse, most people would starve to death, all our technology would rot and disappear in couple decades, and the few survivors would live with medieval-level technology on a thoroughly broken planet with no chance of regaining any advanced tools for thousands, or tens of thousands of years (as all dense energy sources ac…
It's a typical strawman. An average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine. One would argue that this needs to happen for us to really make progress on reducing emissions. People blame "corporations" and "the rich", but it's like blaming a Mexican cartel for making drugs. They wouldn't make them if there weren't any buyers, and unlike with drugs, pointing…
I was addressing the problem with ideas that people should "just stop doing things", or that we should be drastically reducing consumption, or halting economic growth. These things, "consumption" and "growth", aren't just luxury goods and high valuations of bullshit companies. It's peace and prosperity and a hot meal on the table. It's scientific progress and all the technologies needed to fix the mess we've made.
Since bring up blaming: sure, "an average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine". But good luck making them do that. When dealing with climate change, we need to talk about what's possible, not about what would be possible if we were living in a fairy land where every human is a perfectly rational actor prioritizing good of the many over the good of the few, and coordination problems didn't exist.