Stezza,
No problem about stopping growth.
Just stop increasing the amount of energy available.
Growth is dependant on energy and as oil production, it now seems
fairly certain stopped increasing last year in July that is it.
We may crank it back up a bit to cover the fall due to the poor
economic conditions, but that won't take long to be used up.

As the depletion sets in at about 2% per year, increasing at a rate
no one has put a number on yet we will increasingly be more interested
in transport energy needs than global warming.
The CO2 production fill fall faster than any ETS could cause.

The climate modellers didn't put oil depletion into the climate
models so it doesn'y show in their results. They only put increasing
oil consumption in as business as usual scenario input.

GIGO !

There is not the slightest reason or evidence to think that sustainability is more achievable by way of central economic planning, than by way of prices.

"Just stop increasing the amount of energy available."

Ok, so who is going to stop us (i.e. the people who want more energy)? And how?

Solutions seem simple if you oversimplify the problem.

People probably calculated that once horses reached a certain population transport and food production would peak and we would all be stuffed.

Stezza: "People probably calculated that once horses reached a certain population transport and food production would peak and we would all be stuffed."

I do remember that calculation, actually. The point was made that modern cities would not be possible with horses, as we would all be buried in horse poo. If you do the calculation averaged distance travelled versus poo produced, buried is entirely accurate depiction of what would happen.

Stezza: "Can anyone tell me how it would be possible to prevent ... population growth without draconian measures?
Stezza: "Solutions seem simple if you oversimplify the problem."

The solution for us in Australian is simple regardless. We just reduce immigration. It is not so simple for the rest of the world of course.

Stezza: "Ok, so who is going to stop us (i.e. the people who want more energy)? And how?"

I think Bazz would argue "who" is gaia and "how" is let the oil wells run dry. You will I presume argue their are alternatives (like coal to liquids), which is true. But CTL has 2.5 times the CO2 footprint. So then it becomes a question of whether this matters. The people we pay to predict whether things like this matter say it will. Others say it doesn't. I am not going to enter into that debate here, but suffices to say the people that believe it really, really does matter are another "who".

Stezza: A wise man once said "They got the guns, but we got the numbers"

Yes, well I wonder what our Aboriginals, the Aztecs, the American Indians would feel think about that? Indeed I wonder what you think of it too. We have nations to the north of us with populations in excess of 1 billion, a number we can never hope to come close to. Me, I prefer to have lots of excess capacity around so we can afford lots of big guns.

Stezza said;
Ok, so who is going to stop us (i.e. the people who want more energy)?
And how?

In a word geology !

Yes as Rstuart said CTL in various forms will produce some but the
scaling is horrendous. All that would do is bring peak coal earlier.

I have to disagree that what we do and don't do makes no difference to the Earth's climate; every institution that studies climate says otherwise. Sure it's hard and costly to change to low emissions energy but it doesn't take computer modelling to know that it'll be a lot harder and costly to have failed to do so.

Time to give up the excuses for continuing 'development' models that entrench further increases in emissions and pretending that science's warnings of huge future impacts can be ignored; there'll be no defaulting on those repayments as they come due.

That the precise details of a crash can't be known doesn't mean the crash won't happen or that hitting the accelerator won't make it worse. Prosperity based on ignoring the future costs and consequences is a bubble that's going to burst and the longer we put off paying the price for development that is sustainable the costlier it will get.