At least here in Argentina, the pensions are quite low. The retired persons can't make a strike, so the government cuts the pensions a little each time they need some money. [Every government, form every party. The opposition claims it's unfair, but when the government switch party, they make their own cut.] Now the minimal retirement salary less than US$200 (depending of the exchange rate).

France tried to increase the age of retirement and people got angry. An alternative solution is to cut the pensions a little, but I guess people will get angry too.

In USA the system is different and they save they money and later get their money back, so cutting it is more obvios stealing, but I guess it's possible because they can't make a strike. [We tried something like that. The banks got a nice direct cut, the government got another nice indirect cut, and after some years we decided to make all retirement public again and in the transition the banks got a nice indirect cut, the government got another nice direct cut.]

Remember that one day you will retire, and you may like to have a good enough retirement salary. You don't want to be blamed for whatever new problem appears and get a 20% cut of your retirement money. (Are solar panels more difficult to recicle than expected? Did the wind turbine kill too many birds? Probably not, but it's difficult to guess the problems will know in 50 years.)

And this would stop global carbon emissions? What about the shipping industry, the mining industries, the fuel required to do all the shipping and mining and farming, etc. etc.?

My understanding is that nothing short of a massive, forced reduction in resource consumption will do anything to seriously slow down carbon emissions and curb climate change, if indeed it can be curbed.

It helps to realize when your panicking is going to create a worse disaster because you haven't accepted the current situation.