TonyPrep wrote:yesplease wrote:I think stating it can't go on infinitely is a bit trivial don't you? I might as well state I can't have an infinite number of tuna sandwiches.
I agree, which is why I never said that.
Or indefinitely if you want to be specific. In this context they mean the same thing AFAIK, but there's nothing wrong with minding P's and Q's.
TonyPrep wrote:I just wanted to put it out that economic growth can't go on indefinitely
TonyPrep wrote:yesplease wrote:That being said, I think my initial response to your statement was reasonable given the magnitude of waste present in our society, considering you or I never stated an interval wrt the statement.
A lot of economic activity is dependent on wasteful expenditure.
Sure thing. But that economic activity can result in a much smaller growth in GDP compared to alternative applications if externalities are not considered.
TonyPrep wrote:yesplease wrote:Economic growth does not always require increasing resources, which your figures for per capita energy consumption, compared to per capita GDP have shown.
They didn't show that, they showed that per capita energy consumption has been, and possibly could be, more efficient. Remember that resources are not just energy and nor is per capita energy consumption indicative of total energy reduction (or even stabilisation)
Resources are included in net energy use since w/o that energy, we would have no other resources. We have to expend energy, and the energy we expended to acquire resources is indicative of the cost of those resources. Like I said before, if you have some other reasonable metric to relate resource consumption besides energy, as well as consumption figures, feel free to bring it to the table. But, w/o convincing info that a comparison like that is possible, I will stick to comparing resource acquisition via the energy required to acquire, process, and use said resources.
TonyPrep wrote:Economic growth requires more resources.
This is not true in all cases. Since resource acquisition, processing, and use requires energy, the cost of those resources is illustrated in energy use. If you can provide proof otherwise as well as a metric for comparison, please do, but resource use necessitates energy use, and because of this energy use reflects resource use. Like I said before, energy use strongly correlates with GDP, however, we have no had any significant environmental restrictions of energy use that would illustrate a disconnect. We have however had social incidents that limited energy use, and by proxy, resource use, and during the years after, GDP per capita[1] climbed while energy use per capita[2][3] remained more or less the same.
Economic growth does not always require more resources, be them energy based or not.
TonyPrep wrote:However, remember that even a stable economy that uses finite resources, cannot use those resources sustainably (since they are finite). If one is only interested in sustaining society, more or less as it is now, over a few decades, then that might be possible, though I don't think it is likely.
I agree that our society will change. We can't waste oil at the rate we are now forever.
[1]http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/1998_Draft/World_GDP/Estimating_World_GDP.html
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
[3]http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1388_world_primary_energy_consumption_by_region.html