In a nutshell, it simply can't/won't work.

This is incorrect. The energy transition is inevitable. What remains to be seen is does it happen by human agency making the deliberate planned execution, or do we simply collapse to pre-industrial levels suffering even more severe versions of the multiple overlapping crises of ecological overshoot possibly even leading to human extinction.

Either way, the destination is a world without fossil fuels. How many people can the planet support under what levels of political, industrial and technological sophistication and what consumption levels are possible remain undetermined. While our opportunities to guide this process are limited and flawed, they are still thing we have influence over. If we fail to make the necessary decisions for optimal outcomes, the universe will make those decisions for us with the comensurate suboptimal consequences.