Great article. For me, the takeaway is here:
Emissions reduction of 6%/year and 100 GtC storage in the biosphere and soils are needed to get CO2 back to 350 ppm, the approximate requirement for restoring the planet’s energy balance and stabilizing climate this century. Such a pathway is exceedingly difficult to achieve, given the current widespread absence of policies to drive rapid movement to carbon-free energies and the lifetime of energy infrastructure in place.
6% emissions reduction per year basically means a 6% reduction in global economic activity, year after year, till there are essentially no more carbon emissions. This a higher rate than most recessions and depressions and is closer to what is usually considered economic collapse or crisis.
(Even with this, I think these are optimistic numbers, since feedbacks seem to be kicking in sooner and more powerfully than nearly anyone expected, and 350 is certainly too high a number, since we haven't been above 300 for hundreds of thousands of years, at least.)
It looks as if more people are coming around to Kevin Anderson's positions:
ETA:
It strikes me that what is basically needed is a fundamental re-definition of the world economic system. Socialism sees the function of the economy to benefit human society; Capitalism, to benefit those with capital (or the flow of capital...part of whose ideology is that helping the rich/capital flow...will also help all of society).
What is needed now is an economy whose main goal is to benefit ecosystems and to struggle to restore some balance to the living communties and life support functions of the earth.
Call it Ecologism, Gaiaism, or perhaps
It's-Not-Just-About-Us-ism.
The basic priorities of this economy/polity are not increasing GDP (especially as those measures increase as the viability of the planet decreases), increased Wall Street profits, or even increased general human welfare.
The priority is to avoid utter catastrophe for the planet and (nearly) all its inhabitants, human and non-.
Activities that go against this imperative must be severely punished economically and, in severe cases (like mining or burning fossil-death-fuels beyond rapidly constricting legal limits), outlawed.
I have no idea how one (or even many) would go about instituting such a system, but there are elements of in the current system that could be built on.
Of course, conservatives and even many 'liberals' would howl about eco-fascism and infringement of freedoms, blind to the horror the current system visits on the current poor and the near-future... everything, including massive infringement on the most basic freedom of all--the right to life itself.
But clearly a narrow, short-term-focused economy
