"Ideal" growth of an economy is 3%. Growth takes resources(fossil fuels, ore, etc). Compound growth takes more and more resources over the whole planet. Free market fundamentalism means we're not investing so heavily into alternative sources but burning what we've got. Compound that 3% and it's just a metter when we'll be fucked unless things change a lot.
This is simply wrong. We produce vastly more GDP per unit of energy than we did a century ago, and will do the same a century from now.
The size of an economy is a measure of what people will pay for a good. It's not a measure of how big a pile of steel you can make. The most expensive goods nowadays, services and computing, do not take vast piles of resources. In fact, the most expensive computers use the LEAST energy per unit of computation.
While GDP/energy ratios have improved in some countries:
1. Total energy usage has increased.
2. There's been significant increased inequality within those nations. Particularly the US, also major industrial countries (G-7, OECD, etc.).
3. Many of these countries are exporting heavy manufacturing, with energy and other resource utilisation, and pollution generation, particularly to China and India.
"The material footprint of nations ", Thomas O. Wiedmanna, Heinz Schandl, Manfred Lenzenc, Daniel Moranc, Sangwon Suhf, James Westb, and Keiichiro Kanemotoc.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1220362110. PubMed ID24003158.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110
"The true raw material footprint of nations ", September 3, 2013. "The study, involving researchers from UNSW, CSIRO, the University of Sydney, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, was published today in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It reveals that the decoupling of natural resources from economic growth has been exaggerated."
Three percent shall be the number thou shalt grow, and the number of the growing shall be three. Four shalt thou not grow, neither grow thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
For most of human prehistory and history, the rate was closer to 0.01%. It had progressed mightily between 1500 and 1750 to 0.17%. Rates of growth over 1% per year weren't known until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution (1800). There's no compelling reason to believe they're sustainable, and multiple compelling reasons to believe they're not.
