This phrase is interesting, economic growth in GDP “cannot plausibly be decoupled from growth in material and energy use, demonstrating categorically that GDP growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
While GDP has serious deficiencies as a proxy for productivity, the above statement rests upon incorrect assumptions:
- That increases in material goods are the only way to satisfy desires for “more”. As fully immersive VR matures in the next decade or so, people will be able to substitute VR for most physical experiences. It is these experiences and not experience-generating possessions that are wanted, in most cases.
- That growth in energy use is implicitly limited in a practical sense. This belief, though orthodoxy among many, is wrong. We have in hand multiple ways to generate effectively unlimited amounts of clean energy, some of which are being aggressively developed. For example, the government of Japan has a national plan to develop and deploy Solar Power Satellites (SPS) in the next several decades.
- The same is true of material. On the production side, we have two well-credentialed, impressively staffed and significantly funded startups gearing up to mine asteroids in the 2020s. (Deep Space Industries, and Planetary Resources) The results of their efforts will, in short order, dwarf all historical terrestrial mining efforts — and there is NO environmental damage from this kind of resource development.
- On the recovery side, The US military as well as the nation of Japan are now deploying plasma converters. These machines almost completely recycle any waste products, excepting radioactive ones. (A small amount of “slag” is produced, but it serves as an inert construction material.) Further, front end permaculture systems can recover complex, valuable molecules without reducing them to plasma.
- The human population is not endlessly expanding. (To be fair, this may not have been implied by the writer. But it is an article of faith among many who share his views.) The UN has forecast a permanent leveling off of world population circa mid-21st century. Therefore, there will not be an endlessly expanding maw of human demand for resources.
All of the above points are carefully documented from multiple mainstream sources in my book, A Celebration Society. We need not fear the future; we have in hand all of the technologies and understandings necessary to create a society based on systems of sustainable technological abundance.
Capitalism is in the process of completing itself, regardless of anyone’s preferences. There are multiple possibilities as to which system will replace it. Our proposal relies upon capitalism to enable the advent of something new; something that will neither require redistribution nor a reduction of anyone’s lifestyle. A system, if you will, of “haves and have mores” rather than “haves and have nots”. A system in which everyone’s basic needs can be met via automated production.
It simply requires a group of people opening their minds to the possibilities, aligning, and challenging assumptions that arise from within the present Scarcity Game mindset, which pervades every existing economic system and most discussions of change.
