There are possible solutions to the resource problem. The keywords are renewable energy and recycling, and ecosystem preservation.

One can probably extend material growth on this planet for hundreds of years if:
1) The energy system is converted to 100% sustainable energy or we develop fusion power
2) All material gods that are desposed get either fylly recycled into raw materials that can be used again, or they are part of a ecosystem loop where the waste is sent to the ecosystem in a form and a quantity so that the ecosystem is able to sustainably reproduce the original resource.
3) The footprint of human activity dos not surpass the carrying capacity of vital ecosystem services needed for the survival of life on this planet. So a preservation of key ecosystems is required.

Theoretically one could imagine that technologists came up with an artificial ecosystem, but not even fully understanding how climate and ocean currents operate we cannot hope to master such technology in the near future.

Haha, people didn't like my little post. Just because resources as we see them now are looking scarce doesn't mean resources as we know them in the future are "finite". 100 years ago Uranium wasn't a resource. Before the iron age, iron wasn't a resource. Humans have a habit of producing new technology that changes the resource picture as we know it.

Humans have been growing for how many years? My money is on growth. I guess I'm a little more optimistic than this "dark ages" crowd.

Overall, nicely put. However, not sure I agree that "Market expansions are also fundamentally prejudiced and often in error". Credit expansions, yes --market expansions, sometimes, but not always.

I disagree that a truly "free market" means one with no rules at all --as many anarchists and neo-conservatives believe. I believe it's supposed to mean a human-designed market bound by fundamental rules of fair play. Ideally, it should be free of coercion, fraud, market manipulation, government subsidies, and monopolies/cartels. It should be one that encourages competition and financial transparency, not intimidation and fraud, which tends to weed out bad actors and reward good ones.

Unfortunately, such a market is an ideal, and one we are further from today than we have been in decades.

I think it's also worthwhile pointing out that any real 'improvements' to our per-capita standard of living in past centuries (living longer, better health/medicine, greater material wealth/comfort) are invariably attributable to improvements in science and applied science (technology), not "growth" in population nor "growth" in debt & the money supply.

Financial growth has failed over and over at its assigned task, to expand markets for goods. Market expansions are almost always accompanied by credit expansions, 'out of the loop' financial activities and always end with money panics and crashes.

While I almost agree since I'm not at all in favour of trying to achieve real growth by printing money and creating debt, I have to disagree!

During the last debth expansion a huge amount of extra "goods" was actually produced and bought in the marketplace. We wouldn't have all those extra SUV's that are now up for sale. Or all those McMansions filled to the brink with home appliances now standing empty and/or unsold. We wouldn't have garages of average people filled up with cheap plastic trash from china. And people wouldnt have been changing their laptops and mobile phones every second year.

It is clear that printing of money can induce production and consumption of material goods. Its also clear that in a world facing limits on mineral resources and ecosystem carrying capacity this debth based growth is bound to hit a wall of high prices and resource constraints.

Investment in solar and nuclear seems to be just as bad as anything else right now. It is hard to see how they will bail us out.

Sofistek, the point of the article is not simply that resources are limited. Kids learn that in elementary school. It states that because of finite resources a monetary system without debt is inevitable because an end to growth is inevitable. Here's some issues I have:

"In spite of the clear issue of a finite world, the financial community has taken as one of its central beliefs that Economic Growth is Good, and is in fact to be expected."

Just the financial community? All plants and animals seem to have that belief system, right? Also, the author only discusses growth since the industrial revolution. I think that it is a little short sighted to only look at growth since we have been using fossil fuels for energy.

My main disagreement is in the solution.

"The only solution I can see is to develop a new monetary system that is not debt based, and is not expected to grow. Ideally, it would decline as there are fewer resources, and as the economy naturally declines."

I said, I don't think that humans would accept an end to growth and correspondingly an end to long term debt. I was pleasantly surprised to see the rating of my comment at -10 last night and loved your response.

People are always trying to get ahead of each other and are always succeeding. This has been true since the stone age. I don't understand how someone can think because its getting harder to drill oil or mine copper that this will change. People, businesses, and economies that think they can't grow will get run over by ones who do think so because they can. It has always been that way. The limit to what we may think of now as resources will not stop them. That is why I believe there will not be an end to lending or growth.

Do you understand that resources, of all kinds, are limited?

In that they are all functions of energy, which we have an upper limit of utilizaton on earth of 10^17 watts placed by the radiative capacity of waste heat, some 10^4 more than all of civilization uses today.

In the solar system its quite a bit larger. That human civilization can do nothing but harm a biosphere or even that its welfare is in the long run even dependant on biology at all isn't assured. To assume that we're even close to the end of growth is terribly premature and in my view, ridiculous.

We've barely just begun.

The only viable one that didn't do this, was one where each 'colony' was self sustaining and did not require resources from the others.

You say you don't have any answers, but there it is. Resources have to be bounded by horizons. Horizons understood by the "colony". Meaning that Maine in US should not be consuming more than it produces. Measured on something like Odum's secals - something that tells us that cutting and importing one sequoia from California to Maine is VERY VERY expensive. Perhaps the entire income of Waldo county. Don't do it - can't do it.

Carbon credits need to be geographically restricted to what the same geographical boundaries can sink.

The fish on the Georges Banks, under such a scheme, might recover (doubtful because various ecological tipping points have been passed), and there would be "surplus". "Surplus" fish that would never be harvested. But remember, in nature, NOTHING is wasted. The surplus is only a failure of our understanding.

Boundaries. Local economies need to coincide with bioregions, etc...

cfm in Gray, ME

"The answer of course is that had we built sustainable cities, educated instead of dumbed down, created free mass transit instead of private cars, protected at least 50% of the Earth for the other species and developed justice and democracy instead of developing weapons and tyranny and torture, then we would have been in a position to use all our resources in a non exponential way and acquired fusion power in our own time."

Terence, excellent post. What you describe in the above passage would require a form of governance that went beyond "term limits" of elected officials. Somehow we need to be able to implement long term plans that are maintained and adhered to without being mutated for political motives. Recent history has not followed this pattern well.

One of the consequences of using the energy resources rapidly is that it means our technically complex society in all likelihood will not last long enough to reach fusion. It is almost in reach, but out of reach. It's is essentially the last stepping stone to the stars as it were. Isn't it odd that it was placed just far enough out of reach?

You do realize that if you burned all the uranium and thorium with todays technology as fast as you could without melting the planet you would have to do it for some 1-2 million years before it ran out, right? One might suspect sometime over the next several hundred centuries we'll have the next substitute for fission. If not I suppose we'll all just die, but a million years is a good run I imagine.

"A thought experiment is perhaps best. Lets suppose Fusion power was cracked tomorrow (and it won't. Even those scientists working on it agree it will be a minimum of 25 years or more before we get a working reactor that might produce useful amounts of power of the order of 1GW or more and scale up would take years after that), but nevertheless we will imagine somehow it is so. Then in this scenario power is essentially unlimited. Straight off, the suburban sprawl would go into even higher gear. Even the distant deserts, Arctic or anywhere else is in commute distant. We could mine anything, no matter how poor the ore grade. Clearly pollution would soar. Would we bother use our new found energy to clean it up? I doubt it. The assault on the environment would accelerate even more. Currently we are in the midst of the 6th Great Extinction on Earth, but nobody seems to care as if it was unimportant. It is important. Again lets ignore that, because fusion power gives us fusion rockets/spacecraft. So now suddenly the whole solar system is opened up for travel and exploitation. We really could put people on Mars and mine the asteroids. But for what? To make more stuff for our consumer society?"

Thanks for this, Terence (real name, or reference to Latin author?).

This is the central discussion we need to have--on this site, in our communities, in the nation, in the world. What is energy and power for? If we don't know the answer to this, we can't know how much or what kind we should be trying to get. It boils down to the even deeper question of what WE are for. Unfortunately, such questions tend to prompt either religious (usually unthoughtful) responses or blank stares and head scratching (or worse).

We really do need to take a long look at ourselves in the mirror and ask what we're for and what we need power to do. Most economists would answer this on the micro level with "self maximization" of some sort, and on the macro level with "eternal growth." These are generally unquestioned axioms in their ideology, so most economists are unable to even think of them as anything that can be discussed.

Many others (an extreme form is our friend Dezakin, here, but he is just a slightly more extreme form of a prevalent mindset) would not for a moment think that preserving--or even not being responsible for the annihilation of--other forms of life and ecosystems could ever fit into any answer to the question of what humans are for.

Probably for any such discussion to be fruitful, it should start with the negative: "What aren't humans for?" That is, what activities dehumanize us? What outcomes are least desirable?

To me, causing the extinction of most of the other complex life forms on the planet is not a positive or desirable outcome. That some others don't seem to share this assumption with me is a constant source of amazement and bafflement for me. But I suspect most don't basically believe this is happening or possible so it need not be part of the equation.

In a lot of ways this is Gail point.

What this means is that the Banker becomes a investor or hard money lender. Money will be made and lost but as with the example whats happening is something marginally better is replacing something else.

You can look at ancient Japan when it closed itself off the Japanese developed what was arguably the most refined culture in the world. Semi-closed Japan the same. Refinement replaces growth.

For energy it would be efficiency. For buildings it would be building to last 500 years.

But if you look at the system from the outside growth is zero for every building built or region expanding another is declining.

We have actually had these patterns start to form already with the Western nations arguably in decline and Asia and the Middle East on the rise. This is a very natural pattern. The problem is resource usage in the west is still very high and the resource base is declining.

Eventually we will revert back to this natural ebb and flow and any attempt at endless growth debt financing will quickly result in collapse just like it used to throughout the ages.

You will still have bubbles and crashes and rises and falls its simply that in a finite decreasing energy world these swing will be much more muted. No 100 years of endless growth.

Sure Mania's or bubbles will happen but they will fail quickly most of the time and in most parts of the world you should see the economic system revert back to one of no debt and a slow accumulation of wealth in durable assets esp in areas that limit population. Some areas will choose large population of poor and wealth concentration.

At some point and who knows when the human race as a whole will eventually begin to limit its population and as the population declines real wealth per capita will increase.

Gail,

You're describing of course, the death, or end of capitalism and the world we've all known. The end of consumerism and an entire way of life, or death, depending on ones perspective. You do this quite calmly, as if it's inevitable. I wonder. Doesn't this imply that the capitalist aristocracy will meekly accept the demise of the world they've created and controled for centuries, and that they will just go the way of the dinosaurs, vanishing into history without resistance? Are you sure about this? Personally I have my doubts it'll be that easy to create, what's close to a alternative, new, world.