Bartlett says that exponential growth in population and commodity consumption cannot continue forever. That's obvious. It doesn't need refutation, and it can't be refuted.

The problem is, it's a straw man. No serious economist argues that it can, or that it should.

Both population and commodity consumption follow an S-curve of exponential growth followed by a plateau. Any professional demographer will tell you that's true of population, any serious economist will tell you that's true of commodity consumption.

The hard question is, can developing countries achieve that plateau in the same way as the OECD? The answer is probably not: if they are going to be prosperous, they will have to do it differently.

But Bartlett's arguments are just a distraction from the real problems.