[gruez]

>If we continue growing the economy at 2-3% YoY we will be extracting all energy from the Milky Way in 1000 years and applying it to the economy. Not probable!

gdp growth =/= energy consumption growth

Also 1.03^1000 = 6.810^12, but wolframalpha says the number of stars in the milky way is 310^11. Considering that we're nowhere close to capturing even 1% of the energy output of energy that reaches the earth, let alone all the energy that the sun emits, your estimate of 1000 years is probably off by a few orders of magnitude. Finally, if we're actually capturing all the energy of the milky way, presumably we'd be a space faring civilization and can therefore colonize other galaxies, making that a non-issue.

[vbarrielle]

> gdp growth =/= energy consumption growth

As far as data is concerned, the correlation is pretty big though: https://theshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/gdp_e...

[bzbarsky]

True, but for the US, for example, energy consumption has been pretty much flat for the last 20 years, and decreasing in per-capita terms. See https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-28/beyond...

It's interesting to see how world trends look as more and more of the world ends up in the position the US was in 20 years ago in terms of economic mix.