Moreover, we can do this secure in the knowledge that we can have both more economic equality and more growth.

have economic growth and rising equality for the entire planet. We also have to fix our other dependencies on non-renewable resources, and we cannot continue to grow the population of humans. But those are actually solvable problems.

We changed environments when we hunted with sharp sticks and started choosing where to plant seeds. We're not getting out of jail for free just because we harness some sun and wind to run and maintain a global civilization of 7+ billion people(and more before the number actually goes down) that all want everything.

Like anything else in physical reality, renewable energy will have a downside to it. We probably don't even know what it is yet, but that's how complex existence works though.

Plus we don't have much experience with a human society that doesn't grow the population. Any that did, either don't exist anymore, or are some small jungle tribe. Every institution we've built is based on more people. We don't do limits very well, which is why we hope renewables will be limitless.

Our dependence on those, while critical, doesn't also threaten to destroy the habitat as fossil fuels and an unbounded human population do. The point is that these problems are not insurmountable and we can in fact have a global economy that is fair for everyone, not just for a vanishingly small set of astoundingly wealthy assholes.

Capitalism is a financial tool that depends on reducing the amount of costs (valued either as a financial or effort/opportunity cost) that are used for the optimal production result.
It is specifically a financial optimization "machine" for organizational constructs that place a value on property and representations used to acquire property. There is no real governance inherent to capitalism; it can be used in combination with whatever economic governance tool (i.e. socio-political system) in which it is operated.

Capitalism itself does not handle the presence of excess or unrequired resources - especially labor and intellectual resources - very well, because there is a cost to maintaining resources, and capitalism requires the reduction of costs as part of the financial optimization to be effective.
This is where the governance factor of economics must come into play; the choice to conserve or maintaining resources for future use, and how far out one needs to be concerned about conserving resources.
If you are a corporation, you are only concerned about keeping your board of directors and investors comfortable. Depending on how much value there is in a corporation's production or service model to maintaining a customer base in a specific location or market will direct how much economic concern that corporation has with the world it operates in. Holistically, it does not matter how well or what you are doing in a market or location, other than for your personal corporate well-being. You are only concerned about the resources you need to maintain yourself.

If you are a government, you need to be concerned with all the local economic resources, not just the few needed for the production of a few items. You need to be concerned with excess resources and their requirements - especially population, which, unlike for a corporation, is not a market that uses a product, but a raw economic resource that produces a wide range of products and opportunities, which may or may not be applicable to a financial result or particular desired result. Populations, like every other raw resource, need to be maintained and nurtured to reach an optimal economic potential.

This plays out in a balancing act between the short-term needs of the few and the long-term needs of the many. It's a maturity issue.
If a shiny economic tool is deemed to be more important than actual resource governance, then everyone is headed to a big trash heap of ever-dwindling resources being wasted because a few people want to play with their tools rather than actually produce a viable economy.

Haele