[All] Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist

[Peter Kofler]

Some of you may be agnostic on the topic of exponential economic growth, others may be experiencing some cognitive dissonance re. the possibility that finite, non-negotiable natural limits just aren't compatible with endless exponential economic growth; still others may be adopting the "head in sand burying" stance, positing that growth may eventually end, but at a point too far off in the future to worry about. For those of you still on the fence, this is one of the most analytically and numerically well-(de)constructed arguments I've read to date, with a measure of humanism/biophilia, to boot: 
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/#more-894
In the author's own words: 
"So I can twist my
head into thinking of quality of life development in an otherwise steady-state
as being a form of indefinite growth. But it’s not your father’s growth. It’s
not growing GDP, growing energy use, interest on bank accounts, loans,
fractional reserve money, investment. It’s a whole different ballgame, folks.
Of that, I am convinced. Big changes await us. An unrecognizable economy. The
main lesson for me is that growth is not a “good quantum number,” as physicists
will say: it’s not an invariant of our world. Cling to it at your own peril."
The article includes a plug for a book on ecological economics by Daly & Farley:
Ecological
Economics, by
Herman Daly and Joshua Farley, states in its Note to Instructors:

…we do not share
the view of many of our economics colleagues that growth will solve the
economic problem, that narrow self-interest is the only dependable human
motive, that technology will always find a substitute for any depleted
resource, that the market can efficiently allocate all types of goods, that
free markets always lead to an equilibrium balancing supply and demand, or that
the laws of thermodynamics are irrelevant to economics. 		 	   		  
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