Tbfh, he's wrong. The modern (read: based on electricity and fossil fuels) way of life is dependent on cheap energy. China is currently the biggest emitter in the world. Not because they're particularly wasteful necessarily, no. Surprise, an enormous amount of energy is required for a modern society to sustain itself, especially when that country is home to 1.4 billion people. They've built more nuclear reactors than all other countries combined in the past decade, and they're still heavily reliant on gas and coal (62% coal, 5% nuclear). Nobody knows how to efficiently and cleanly generate that much energy.

For comparison, France, which produces 78% of its electricity with nuclear, only generates about 380 TWh per year with nuclear power plants (2019). China generates ~350 TWh/year with nuclear. 5% of their energy production produces as much as close to 80% of France's energy sector.

And before anybody chimes in with "but they produce everything for everybody in the West": Only around 10% of their production is exported. They have the biggest domestic market in the world and they have the largest middle class population in the world. They have money too and they consume like any other economic actor.

And all this is before considering things like how energy-intensive producing fertilizer is, and fossil fuels are a required part of getting the necessary ingredients.

This can't be solved by consuming/producing less unless a part of that solution is wiping out a significant part of the human population and getting rid of modern civilization. Solving the energy issue (and by extension poverty, resource conflicts, etc.) requires us to actually figure out how to generate enough cheap and clean energy for 8+ billion people.