Decarbonizing

 You'll be surprised how well the economy will work without burning carbon. 

We can have a gentle decarbonization, first by stopping exploration and opening new sources now, before they start. Then, by shutting down pipelines and refineries one by one, randomly. Removing fossil fuel subsidies, which are artificially depressing the fuel prices.  We can do this, and it needs to be done internationally.  As this happens, we can cut down consumption, find alternatives, not fast enough at first, but faster as the technologies mature. 

Or, we can let the true ruler of the earth, the climate, do it for us, more cruelly, more suddenly, more capriciously. Vulnerable populations will be hurt more at first, forcing migrations to the unwilling not-yet affected areas, but it's only a matter of time - a short time - before smugly secure places are also affected and also made uninhabitable. The lifeboats in this chaotic sea will be the communities that are sustainable - that pay their debt to the earth. But it will not have the flexibility of response that a controlled shutdown would allow. 

The collapse of non-human ecosystems and geological process like ocean steams, jets streams, glaciers, which underlie all economies, no matter which system, will collapse them. You can't claim that working to stop carbon pollution is too expensive. Its expense is pitifully small compared to the collapse of everything underlying value, worldwide.

We know of no processes that can pull the carbon out of the atmosphere as rapidly as we put it in, at scale. So we have to start by not making the problem worse.