Limits to economic growth? Sustainability?

economic growth required to provide for a compounded world birth rate that creates a exponential growth rate cannot be met with finite resources.

In fact....it may appear that there are plenty of resources until the exponential growth reaches critical mass on those resources. Then they will dissapear in a heart beat resulting in great tragedy.

We either compassionately learn to limit population growth now or nature will do that through the balance of the system by drastic measures later.

Do you think that America can live in a self contained isolated bubble?

America is accually living off the rest of the world. I mean look at the trade deficit for the last 30 years and foreigners nice enough to buy the US debt. Households living on credit, businesses surviving on credit, governments surviving on credit.

These imbalances are being corrected FAST!!


Dont worry about it though most of the world will be put on its rear end by this coming depression.

No need to worry about immigration or commodity prices they will be self-corrected. They are a function of Economic strength and credit in that order. Commodity prices are going to multi year lows in the next 10 years.

@FiatOrFreedom: Unfortunately your living in a dreamworld. Firstly, we will never have "virtually free energy", nor does that phrase make sense. Free energy is a term from thermodynamics meaning energy available to do work. The processes you are talking about don't seem feasible...

But say they were. Economic growth would be rampant, and we would very quickly find new limits on growth. Unfortunately, this scenario would end badly with a horribly polluted world. No energy can't reverse it

Unfortunately this speaker has failed to address the root problem in reaching a sustainable economy: growth. We may be able to find alternative energy sources but this does not show us how to address the constantly increasing demand for energy. We cannot continue to consume more year over year, since the quantity of free energy that is replenished on Earth every year is constant (the power of incident radiation).

Do you think we will stop detroying everything around us. No we will continue to expand the human population at an even higher rate.Human population growth is based on resources input, and the use of non-renewable resources, and hyperexploitation of renewable ones.
If we create free energy, we will expand exponentially-exponentially fast. As we are already expanding exponentially.

I don't know.
I just think having virtually free energy gives you options that could help us decrease our "footprint".
Just think. any chemical process you can think of can be made to happen at will.
We wouldn't need expansive farmlands... you could just grow food underground if you wanted...
Building materials could be synthesized from scratch while waste is decomposed at virtually no cost...
Don't forget, as nations become more affluent their growth rates decrease i.e. populations stabilize

The only question that remains is, will we get to that level of proactively minimizing our footprint?, and that is dependent on our collective will to change.
As a species we have a terrible track record of working toward a common goal.

We'll probably kill ourselves over some bullshit before that ever happens.

I guess my point was that it's possible, not necessarily probable but possible.

Yes I agree. Full marks for the Doctors optimism. Can't criticize him for that however. Is 6 billion humans an overpopulated planet? And the number is increasing exponentially. Who are the we's that are going to sort out the massive problems overtaking the planet? Who might the survivors be? The rich? How much time is left? Growth = surplus. How much surplus is left on the planet? Are we the only and first age on this planet that is indestructible and will go on forever?