The physics of socio-cultural evolution.

Garrett treats civilization like a "heat engine" that "consumes energy and does 'work' in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy," . . .

his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."

That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," . . .

that means the acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions is unlikely to change soon because our energy use today is tied to society's past economic productivity.

"Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter," . . .

the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. … If it feels good to conserve energy, that is fine, but there shouldn't be any pretense that it will make a difference." . . .

"The problem is that, in order to stabilize emissions, not even reduce them, we have to switch to non-carbonized energy sources at a rate about 2.1 percent per year. That comes out to almost one new nuclear power plant per day."

"If society invests sufficient resources into alternative and new, non-carbon energy supplies, then perhaps it can continue growing without increasing global warming," . . .

"Ultimately, it's not clear that policy decisions have the capacity to change the future course of civilization."

This may all be true but it's incomplete. As noted in Reverse-Combustion carbon dioxide is a form of that "environmental matter" that is used by civilization. It makes no sense to assume that it would accumulate forever unused since it is, after all, carbon and oxygen - things that we value and know how to work with. And, as noted in many previous posts, there are carbon negative methods of energy extraction which accelerate a feedback loop of energy capture and subsequent extraction, which in effect pumps carbon from the air into the ground in ways that enhance soil.

I'm sure that there are many other relevant omissions, and more will be discovered in time so that while it may be true that we will always spend that 9.7 per dollar there is no certainty that carbon dioxide concentrations will increase even if emissions do increase. The course of civilization may be determined, but how we travel that road seems to have any number of possibilities.