I remember an urban planner and climate scientist/communicator discussing the changes that need to be made. He pointed out in his research and the book he published based on it, that it's cheaper for governments to do climate friendly change than it is to maintain the status quo regardless of climate disasters. He says that yea it's degrowth, but it needs to be framed as efficiency to get interest
Just one thing I believe to be really important in selling it:
less consumption -> less production -> less work
That means degrowth is earlier pensions, shorter work weeks, more vacation time and so forth. For many people chilling on the beach is saving the planet.
Yeah, everything is expressed in monetary value. But health, clean air, clean water, health nature do not have monetary value, so they don't matter.
GDP is the total of wealth generated. So a housing shortage, pushes up housing prices, which looks good on the books.. look at all that economic growth.
A word of caution: there is not a constant relationship between carbon emissions (or energy use, for that matter) and GDP. Some economies are far more efficient than others. Some of the most efficient countries are among the wealthiest. So at very least, it is not inevitable that improvements in energy efficiency will mean reductions in GDP, and it certainly doesn't make sense to assume that a reduction in growth will lead to a corresponding reduction in energy use or greenhouse gas emissions.