I do believe some sort of continuous sort of economic growth is possible if we soon quit growing population. Substantial moves toward total recycling, true renewables and more efficient technologies could improve (very subjective I know but few who live in places like Sudan would have much trouble with the term) the standard of living for the bulk of human kind. The developed world's economy would necessarily grow as the rest of the world gets pulled up from hand to mouth existence...if this unlikely though to my mind desireable scenario were to be achieved, and decades of substantially different behavior by all that will take, a new definition of what sort of growth (economic, cultural, spirtual, you name the mix, though population growth seems unlikely to be part of a it) human civilization needs to truly flourish could evolve.

Very utopian I know, but what I consider the more likely outcome of what we have I already intimated many times in many different fashions. The chance of such change happenning without cataclyism...well it is really the only bet regardless of the astronomical odds against it as few will be left to pay off and little will be left to pay off with any bets bets made on our failure to change.

For all the problems our headlong consuming society has created in my lifetime I still find this a much less oppressive cultural atmosphere than the one I grew up in during the fifties--the sort of intolerance we had back then I don't want to see again...but the tradeoffs have been immense.

But the anthrofeeders are not going to remain full of cheap energy much longer (not to mention the shortage of watering stations). Change, great change, is inevitable.