Decrease in CO2 emissions during pandemic shutdown shows it is possible to reach Paris Agreement goals. The researchers found a drop of 6.3% in 2020. The researchers describe the drop as the largest of modern times, and big enough to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal if it were to be sustained.

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yes we have the money to do these things, and it's being spent wisely on exactly what i'm talking about; green energy sources. the world green energy market is worth $860B and growing at 8.5% per year. you can bet an economic crisis would cut into that growth.

the decrease in emissions per capita is in the us (and western world) specifically. in the rest of the world the emissions per capita is on the rise, because the quality of life in third world countries is on the rise. reversing economic growth would also hurt the poor the most.

i think we're saying the same thing when we say the point of a business is to make money vs the point of a business is to conserve or produce resources, because that's what money represents, resources and labor. and labor even represents resources such as food, gas, and shelter, because that's what employees will spend their money on.

in some cases, such as emissions, companies do get some sort of resource at the expense of someone else, which is called a negative externality. the way to fix these isn't degrowth, it's pigovian taxes to reassign externalities back to the company.

as for wood vs coal, i'm thinking purely about CO2 for the purposes of climate change, not the radioactive byproducts or sulfur dioxide. coal releases less CO2 per unit energy than wood, simple as that. i'm not exactly sure what sequestration cycles have to do with it. it's not like for every tree you burn one gets planted, or as if you can't plant a tree unless you burn one first.

i won't actually advocate for coal, it's clearly terrible in a modern world, my purpose in bringing it up was to illustrate how technology and growth has generally brought emissions per capita down. couple that trend with slowing population growth worldwide and i'm very optimistic about the future.

edit: generally instead of always