This is only true if you literally crash the economy and do nothing else. What we can do is instead shift priorities, like food and housing security, while reducing the economy by not doing useless, pointless things. Do we really need all these things we buy at the store now?
We cannot build windmills, solar farms, and nuclear energy plants overnight. We cannot stand up new buildings and create local food supply chains overnight. I was responding to the proposal to cut oil production by 50%-75%, which would be great, but must be done gradually so that our current economic systems have time to respond, i.e. not crash.
Maybe we can announce a ban on pork, beef, plastics, TVs, consumption, etc but it should not be done overnight for the same reasons.
What you have to do is make it worthwhile for people. Steve Keen's idea of a dual price is imo a great idea. How it works is everything has both a dollar price and a carbon price. Everyone in society gets the same amount of carbon credits. You can sell these credits for dollars and vice versa. Those who use a LOT of carbon have to buy them from those that have the credits. What this does is create a wealth distribution down while at the same time capping carbon usage. Those who use very little carbon benefit because they can buy things they previously couldn't, while those that use a lot are punished. Since the vast majority of people are at the lower end of carbon usage, I believe this would be a very popular program.
