If the solution to climate change must involve keeping large numbers of people poor or making existing people poorer, it will fail due to populist backlash and nothing will be done.

There is only one possible solution: replace CO2-intensive power sources like fossil fuels with low or zero CO2 power sources like nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar energy. If that can't be done fast enough, well enough, or affordably, then we should plan and prepare for climate change as a certainty.

We have the technology (solar, wind, nuclear, grid scale batteries, HVDC long range transmission lines, EVs), but do not have the political will. This is largely because the fossil fuel industry is powerful enough to block serious efforts, and because national economic and military competition incentivizes nations to defect from any CO2-reducing strategy and exploit cheap fossil fuels to get ahead quickly.