At first glance, "sustained growth" sounds like an oxymoron. Nothing can grow forever, unless the growth asymptotically approaches zero.
> Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new products and production methods replacing old ones in a never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic growth, which results in a better standard of living, health and quality of life for people around the globe.
> However, this was not always the case. Quite the opposite – stagnation was the norm throughout most of human history. Despite important discoveries now and again, which sometimes led to improved living conditions and higher incomes, growth always eventually levelled off.
...
Neo-Malthusianism is as bunk as Malthusianism was
...to produce the same output. Growth requires greater output though.
Just look at the timeline of energy consumption [0]. Either you're wrong and innovation requires more resources, or you're right and there's no direct relation between innovation and overall resource usage.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
[1] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-inte...
I'm not sure that's what I was looking for though. That's unit consumption per GDP, so it may look stable or even declining regardless of actual consumption of resources.
In a way, it indicates the potential for a more sustainable living but unless it goes down by greater amounts than GDP growth, it's still net positive environmental damage.
Sure. Link in population and living standards and you start to get a toy model that dispels the notion that all growth must be about consumption. (A palette of iPhones represents growth from mainframes of equal mass and energy consumption.)
We know this to be false given the number of civilisations that depleted their soil due because they didn’t know (or care) about crop rotation. Stable-state economies which nevertheless collapsed because they missed a key technology.
We've probably yet to even come close to that eden-like experience.
since the end of the 19th century...
Am I missing something?
How can they assert that the current trajectory of economic growth won't end in stagnation, like every other growth spurt throughout history?
Sure, the economic growth of the last 150 years is unprecedented in history. But so was the second most significant period of economic growth before it stagnated.
Straw man. Nobody argues this.
> sustained economic growth
Is it really such an unreasonable reading?
It's reasonable but unnecessarily reductive. Particulalry when TFA is linked above.