Efficiency is not the same as negative growth.

There are actual, real-life proponents of policies that would have us shrink our economies and decrease the standard of living.

I don't want to jump on the bandwagon too much, but I think if you want to argue for decreased energy use you have to do it in a way that has a vision for quality of life improving. You might for example point out how much more efficient cities are, or how wasteful consumerism is and argue that people can grow to love having less. I'm not sure, but you definitely shouldn't basically say the only solution is to keep the developing world down and maybe shrink the pie in the developed world too. That just isn't a realistic option.

Also like the other commenters I'm not at all sure renewables can't do the job. Prices have fallen fast

> As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable

This is defeatist bullshit.

No one is arguing that the whole world needs to immediately live exactly like the richest citizens.

Your attitude really disappoints and actually enrages me. Luckily, I can take comfort in knowing how counter to human nature it is. Humans will not accept a declining standard of living because a few people want to virtue signal. Try to force it on them at your own peril.

Well we have enough uranium reserves to increase the world's energy output by several orders of magnitude and still last hundreds of years.