This is my primary concern with fusion. I have a gut feeling that fusion existing could actually accelerate consumption and thus climate and environmental change. I have been trying to find research about this. I recently found the book Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner, which I think may be interesting.

I should note that I am not against fusion and absolutely think we should be doing it. However, it's my feeling and something that I'm trying to learn about that we should also be doing many other things. For example, conservation of land and habitats is no longer viable. We have got to be restoring these things as best we can if we have a chance against climate change. I think it should be renamed environmental change, because that's more accurate and paints the more serious picture. Climate change seems to phrase it in very human-centric terms. We also need another economic system whose end goal isn't corporate world domination. We need an economic model that drives innovation but also redistributes and is sustainable. What's interesting is that this is exactly what nature accomplishes. But humans have gone off the rails in terms of consumption. However, with our adaptability and technology, we have been able to continually consume more and more, whereas other animals (e.g., rabbit populations) cannot continually exist outside of some bounds and are checked. What's interesting is trying to understand where our bound or what our check is going to be. I have a feeling that our destruction will eclipse our adaptability and technology at some point. It will not be pretty when that happens.