(1) I'd encourage you to look at Jason Hickel's sources/bibliography closely before taking him too seriously. When he has numbers, they're from very biased sources that make too many assumptions from a place of extreme technological/economic conservatism.

This isn't necessarily done consciously - the scientists who often make these predictions, like all scientists, have a very high standards for what facts are. While this is good for creating sound science, it's bad for predicting the direction of tech/econ development because this method essentially always fails because it's overly rearward looking, using a mix of linear progress lines to predict what ends up being an exponential process.

See this chart for an example of this happening with solar deployment:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/experts-bad-forecasting-sol...

(2) On decoupling, it looks like advanced economies are doing this, but the problem is the rest are still going through the CO2 expansionary phase.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

(3) My main issue with Hickel's work is that his proposal (and other degrowthers) is actually less likely to lead to carbon reductions than the green growth scenario. Namely, you're never going to convince those countries to slow growth enough, so your time is best spent figuring out better green growth or things like geoengineering.

(4) It seems like the degrowthers are more shouting into the void because they actually also have anti-capitalist sentiments (in addition to there environmental ones) which aren't going well. I really recommend Leigh Phillips' book: "Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff" for a defense of green growth from the Left.

https://www.amazon.com/Austerity-Ecology-Collapse-Porn-Addic...

(5) On preppers, crazy news, etc. I think we're going through a very real systemic inflection point similar to how the Industrial Revolution in Europe led to capitalism and liberalization of governments. The same types of forces are at play, putting pressure on our whole social structure and even to the global ecology itself.

Add to this, the collapse of meaning-making structures like family, community, religion, etc. and you have a machine that converts external stress into personal stress - even if you're personally doing fine. Like all those rich preppers.

(6) Long story short: Hang in there! We are probably going to go through some crazy shit in the coming years because of recession, political upheaval, wars, etc., but remember that even throughout all of humanity's worst times, most of us survived and in the moment mostly lived decent lives.

We may need to temper our expectations and be okay with a little rough living, but we are human fucking beings god dammit! and we were built to resilient in the face of crazy odds, and we made it this far!!!

Maintain your optimism and dreams personally. Focus on what you can actually control and who/what matters most to you. Life is too short for constant worry, and if it should pass that our world does end, take solace in that, no matter what we do, we're all dead in the end. So enjoy this life while you've got it.

Good luck stranger and godspeed!