In Copenhagen & Economic Growth - You Can't Have Both, Chris Martensen describes the incompatibilities between the current economic paradigm and reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

"Throw away and buy new!" is the answer to our economic woes! When you think about it, throwing away and buying new is a win for everyone: the mining companies, the energy industry, the chemical industry, manufacturers, the shipping companies, retailers, and eventually the trash haulers and incinerator and landfill firms! Plus the consumer gets to be cool and have the latest product in return for a few days of work, most often at a job that they do not like!

In short, an economic system which is based upon growth (and collapses without it) and promotes consumption will destroy any attempt to reduce environmental degradation and emission of greenhouse gases.

While it may seem that nature can be subordinate to the economy simply by spouting "Global Warming is Nonsense" across the media and continuing to let the economy "grow" without bound, the resources which allow the growth to continue will continue to follow decline as they are used faster than they can be replenished.

All the wind turbines, photovolatic panels, reusable shopping bags, aluminum "NOT PLASTIC" water bottles, fluorescent spiral light bulbs, nuclear power plants, and Priuses in the world were not able to match the emission-reduction capacity of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2010.

That fact alone should be an alert that the system is broken. Trying to reduce consumption and emission in a growth-based economy is problematic. More accurately, trying to run a growth-based economy in a finite world is problematic. Maybe we should make the economy better rather than bigger.