A key belief of modern economics is economic growth which has become a sacred goal. The issue is that this goal lies at the heart of why we are waltzing towards social collapse.
Modern economics makes a couple of errant assumptions that benefit the elite ruling class and industrialists. Firstly, it assumes that "money" is scarce, and secondly, that resources are infinite in supply, only waiting for money/demand to deploy them where they can be monetized to produce more money/demand.
This is so ingrained in the people's thinking process that when they are told they must begin to make investments in clean energy and stabilize the environment or watch their children die horrible deaths their first words are "How will we pay for that?". The fiction of scarce money has become so much a part of their lives that they assume they must "find" some money before they can "afford" to save their only planet.
Free-market capitalism is the economic doctrine all economists learn at university.
And the foundation of free-market capitalism is that economic growth brings social prosperity.
Capitalism isn't inherently bad. It suffers from having a government that is corrupt and fails to regulate it for its own good. Also, very little about modern capitalism is remotely related to free markets because of that. A "true" free market would be very democratic as people would be inclined to use their dollars to vote for or against companies based on their perceptions and personal morality.
Darwin was a smart guy, but I don't think he meant his theory to be applied to economics. If you took a group of toddlers and threw them into a room without supervision until they reached adulthood those who survived would not be candidates for "person of the year". They would, however, likely be highly sought after to run most Wall St companies.
Economists may take a scientific approach to further understanding, but economics in itself is no science.
Scientific theory requires the scientists to be flexible enough to change their projections when data changes or is proven false. Without that ability, economists are more akin to preachers who feel no need to alter their perspective when facts/data change. They can discount any such change as an "externality/God's will" and plow forward unwavering in their "faith".
This is the way an economy should work. Any other economic system is an aberration that distorts the truth.
It's not a coincidence that people who are unbendingly religious tend to be also quite conservative in their economic thought, supporting such things as "balanced budgets, trickle down, austerity in government, and even the long obsolete gold standard". Their comfort zone is always within the status quo and hierarchical.
This has been very effectively weaponized by the status quo elite to maintain many false perceptions surrounding our money and its creation. In spite of extreme changes in how "it all works" after FDR ended the convertibility of dollars to gold in '34 very little has changed in the way politicians and the media present it to the people. The main question asked of any politician or activist wanting to improve our society remains "How will you pay for it?", not "How will you do/resource it?"
When a fundamental of our economic system is wrong, we have ourselves a rather large problem.
An important fundamental of our system has been wrong for some time, but it goes well beyond capitalism. Without a gold reserve to defend and a fiat currency that is no longer finite, we can "fund" our society without being consumed by the insatiable nature of capitalism.
We can establish a condition where "ANY" suffering or lacking of basic necessities in our economy that can be mitigated by creating money is entirely a "political" choice, not economics. The federal government could make itself the employer of last resort, setting the bottom for wages and benefits in the private sector while also using available labor the private sector rejects to mitigate climate change.
As the monopoly issuer of the nation's sovereign fiat currency, any goal that our federal government can resource can be paid for, including environmental protection and restoration. The concept of scarce money would be gone forever and the people could concentrate on building their lives, not profits for an employer.
Neither taxation nor bond issues are any longer "funding mechanisms" and only serve to drain excess reserves from the banking system and accomplish social goals, such as punishing bad behavior or reducing inequity.
The only way that the current economic system could be replaced is that it either breaks down and is replaced by another, or there is a social revolution, and the revolutionaries implement a new economic model.
Both happened together in the great depression, but the people were not made aware of it. The social revolution of that day created the consumer driven capitalist model that now is causing so much destruction, but it can be diverted to any goal as long as the people accept it.
Given the growing number of people who view climate change as a high priority and have become disappointed with our brand of vulture capitalism I don't think their acceptance would be an issue as long as they can see that they will be properly acknowledged and their economic necessities, healthcare, education, some leisure time, pensions, etc, provided.
But because economists are blinded by the dogma of growth, they will never accept that growth can’t be sustained.
There is a growing number of economists and politicians that understand "true" economics as always being about resources and how people interact with them, not imaginary units of measure we call money. I'd suggest that you research Modern Monetary Theory and its supporting economists and academia professionals. They have many interests in common with you, especially regarding limiting growth.
