[ekkeke]

Can someone explain to me why we can't keep growing until the death of the sun? Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily, a microprocessor uses some of the cheapest and most abundant materials and uses less of them now than before. Why might we not continue to find new designs and discoveries that allow us to make ever more efficient and complex objexts, that in turn are worth continually more than what we have now?

Look at software, most of it all uses the same commodity hardware to run but it gets more powerful and complex every year. But by rearranging the same bits of hardware we can get a basic calculator or matlab. The productivity difference between the two is massive and becomes more so every year. Can't we always have new circuits, new software, new FPGAs, new rocket designs, new and better algorithms or even hardcoded solutions calculated once and distributed, that don't use more resources but by being more complex increase productivity?

[birksherty]

> Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily

The growth talked about in the board rooms is exactly that. More output of commercial goods, more sell, need more people buying these even if it's unnecessary for better life, popup more kids increase population so that sells will always increase, create more wealth for the already billionaires while keeping the minimum wage lowest possible, consume, consume more and more. Anything less than that is a disaster.

None of the growth ever talkes about the ecological collapse it's creating, never will. It's about quarterly report even if it complete destroys the future of all in next decade.

[Apes]

Efficiency isn't a silver bullet. There's a limit to free gains from efficiency - you can't go past 100% efficiency, and even at 100% efficiency, you still need to spend energy to do things. It will always take at least 4190 Joules to heat 1 kg of water by 1°C. Even with perfect efficiency, you can never beat that number.

And the closer we get to 100% efficiency, it gets asymptotically more difficult to improve efficiency. Look at the average fuel efficiency of all cars in the US. Going from 12.5 MPG in the 1970s to 25 MPG today was "easy". Going from 25 MPG to 50 MPG will be extremely difficult. Going from 50 MPG to 100 MPG is nigh on impossible.

It gets even more depressing when you realize we have to double efficiencies every time the world doubles its population just to tread water and keep everyone with the same quality of life, while also having no additional effect to the environment.

The world's population is doubling every 60 years. I doubt we can keep doubling efficiencies for even the next 60 years.

Realistically, if we want to create a sustainable world economy, the world is going to have to undergo a massive shift to greener technologies than we're using now, and either the quality of life or the population across the world is going to have to decrease dramatically.

[oceanplexian]

> It will always take at least 4190 Joules to heat 1 kg of water by 1°C. Even with perfect efficiency, you can never beat that number.

You can. A great example of technology that produces greater than 100% efficiency is a heat pump. You can actually buy commercial heat pump tank water heaters that are much greater than 100% efficient at turning electricity into hot water. The energy comes from the ambient air, but the Earth has no shortage of heat energy that can be recovered to do useful work.

[fleddr]

Your exact example is explained in the article, might try reading it. A computer getting faster is development, not growth.

[gryn]

sure the end result (microprocessor) don't use too much resources, but the process that produces it does. you can keep improving but a point you reach physical and economist limit that you just can't outrun.

the second thing economist usually talk about a growth in profit, and that can't always go up.

[seoaeu]

“There exists a limit to growth” and “we are remotely close to hitting the limit” are vastly different claims.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

There are infinite limits on growth. The death of almost all plankton is one such limit. Look up.