Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

2 Economic Growth Limits 26
who wants to keep living. We simply will not find ourselves in the
situation where precious <strong>and</strong> limited resources become arbitrarily
cheap. Alternatively, if people only needed to work an hour per year
to accommodate basic needs, expect a lot less work to be done, acting
as a drag on economic productivity <strong>and</strong> thus preventing inexorable
growth—one way or another.
Once the price floor is reached, the cost of physical resources will not be
able to fall any further. This happens pretty soon after physical resources
cease to grow in scale. Indeed, it seems unlikely (to the author) that
limited resources essential for survival would fall much below 10% of
the total economic scale, which happens within a century of physical
saturation in our 2.3% growth scenario. Point 8 in Figure 2.4 depicts a
more realistic trajectory for the economy (red dashed line) in reaction to
a saturated physical scale. In this case, the economy keeps growing a bit
more than the physical sector, but eventually settles down itself into a
non-growth phase.
What seems like a reasonable lower
limit to you? How economically
insignificant can essentials be <strong>and</strong>
still make sense?
We therefore have a logical sequence providing a few-century timescale
for an end to economic growth. Thermodynamics limits us to at most
a few centuries of energy growth on Earth, <strong>and</strong> economic growth will
cease within a century or so thereafter, assuming a target rate of a few
percent per year. In practice, growth may come to an end well before
theoretical extremes are reached.
2.4 No-Growth World
The foregoing arguments spell out why economic growth cannot be
expected to continue indefinitely—contrary to prevalent assumptions.
When a mathematically-framed model delivers nonsense results—like
the one we used to extrapolate energy use to absurd extremes—it does
not mean the math itself is wrong, just that it has been misapplied or
layered onto faulty assumptions. In this case, the breakdown indicates
that the assumption of indefinite growth is untenable.
The growth regime is woven deeply into our current global society. And
why wouldn’t it be? We’ve enjoyed its benefits for many generations.
We celebrate the myriad advantages it has brought, <strong>and</strong> therefore align
our political <strong>and</strong> economic institutions toward its robust preservation.
Community planning, interest rates, investment, loans, the very role
of banks, social safety net systems, 21 <strong>and</strong> retirement plans all hinge on
the assumption of growth. 22 Shock waves of panic reverberate at signs
of (even temporary) recession, given the importance of growth to our
institutions. Yet the message here is that we cannot expect its unfaltering
continuance—implying that many things will have to change.
21: In the U.S., Social Security <strong>and</strong> Medicare
are examples.
22: Growth in both workforce <strong>and</strong> investments
are essential ingredients of these
schemes that pay out more than an individual’s
past contributions to the program.
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.