Wealth Cannot Be Decoupled From Resource Consumption

* Article: No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change. T. J. Garrett. Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 1–17, 2012

URL = https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.pdf

"Ultimately, civilization appears to be in a doublebind with no obvious way out. Only a combination of extremely rapid decarbonization and civilization collapse will enable CO2 concentrations to be stabilized below the 450ppmv level that might be considered as “dangerous”."

Summary

"This article does not evaluate what long-term policy actions will enable us to limit CO2 emissions while maximizing global economic wealth. Rather, the aim is to explore the range of future trajectories that is actually physically possible: political will can only go as far as physical laws allow. The argument that will be presented is that, unfortunately, wealth cannot be decoupled from resource consumption. In fact, at least at the global scales that are relevant to CO2 emissions, it appears that “Jevons’ Paradox” does indeed apply: efficiency gains will backfire. For this reason, it is likely that all SRES scenarios considerably overestimate the extent of economic health."

(https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.pdf)