[rebuilder]

Like I said, the specifics are certainly open to ridicule. But I don't think you can dismiss the idea that we need to find a way to live without economic growth. I think we still have room for some growth, but not for long. If we keep to the status quo, waste heat from energy production alone will grow to disastrous levels within a few centuries.

[jryan49]

The world's population is still growing, economy must grow or there is less of everything for everyone.

[arcticbull]

This is very un-evenly distributed growth however. Developed nations are at or below sustenance level birth rates and largely rely on immigration to break even. As countries develop, birth rates decline -- this is well documented and incredibly striking. Check out this graph of birth rate vs. HDI [1]. As the rest of the world develops, the curve will invert and turn negative, it's just a matter of time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi...

[gibolt]

Aren't we past the point of having too much? Making plastic single use goods obsolete and reducing all the Amazon purchases that get used once if ever would reduce total output. More focus could be put on quality (I know this can't be defined) products, rather that just driving blind consumerism.

[csdreamer7]

Banning single use plastic is not a bad idea. That's pretty easy to enforce against the chain stores.

I wonder how it would affect garbage collection bills.

[aqme28]

That doesn't necessarily need to be so. Developed economies often end up with below-replacement birthrates (see japan-- it's the direction the western world is headed)

[fulafel]

Population growth is not a constant in the equation.

[dwaltrip]

The universe, heck even the solar system, is pretty big...

[rebuilder]

At e.g. 2.3% yearly growth in energy usage, humanity would use the sun's entire output in roughly 1400 years time and the entire galaxy's energy output in about 2400 years.[1]

I'm all for space exploration and colonization, but I'm sceptical it can solve the growth problem. I mean, what happens on Earth?

Edit: 1: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

[dwaltrip]

Fair enough. That's quicker than I would have guessed, but exponentials are pretty powerful.

If the growth is 1%, then we are good for ~3000 years, even in just our solar system. A tenth of a percent would give us ~30k years in the solar system.

Although, very very low growth would last quite some time on the galactic scale. A hundredth of a percent would give us more than 500k years to reach galactic energy levels. Which may actually be realistic given the difficulties of interstellar travel and cosmic scale engineering.

But yes, it seems that in the next few tens of thousands of years, barring an Earth-shattering revolution in our understanding of energy, we will likely have to learn to live in something much closer to a steady-state system, at least in this solar system.

And even such a paradigm shift would just push out the deadline. But I do think such nitty gritty details of when and how the ceiling is hit will effect how things play out.