Except, that is, if you plot energy consumption per person, and then it becomes clear that they have been overcome by innovation plus the application of additional energy.
Now, innovation alone can deliver economic growth. But it cannot deliver constant 3% economic growth over long periods of time ... that form of growth, which we became accustomed to in the post WWII period, is material extensive growth.
Rather, pure technological progress can deliver periodic waves of economic growth, of various heights. So an economy that relies on "pure" technological progress for its growth is one that must be capable of functioning without problem in a stable state in the periods between the waves of economic growth.
One important element of that in a monetary production economy is to have the government providing a job guarantee (research site), since the inability to deliver steady real growth implies that pure General Theory Keynesian growth policies may easily be constrained by full employment of resources other than labor. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
All these years of climate change denial have just delayed the inevitable adaptation. And Now we're going to biofuels! Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
Even the Bible knows that when one is blessed with seven years of plenty one ought prepare for the following seven of want. Demand cannot endlessly drive supply...
The biofuels bit... It was very predictable, the consequences to forests and food supply, predicted here at ET, in fact, as well as other places. But it is hard to head off those enthusiastic profiteers...
Hmmm, market mechanisms, supply, demand... When something is more scarce the price will go up, which will encourage more investment, which will cause larger supply, to meet demand. This equation ignores the energy aspects, that if your lack is one of energy, then a willingness to pay a higher price is not enough, because the energy to build increased production capacity might not be there, or the sources might not give a large enough return on investment. (In energy, not money...) And all the enthusiasm for further development, seen through the willingness to invest money, cannot help with the energy calculations. Enthusiasm does not appear in thermo. More is not always available... Optimism doesn't cause everything to come out alright...
It seems to me that economics predicts that with some optimism, enthusiasm, and lots of demand, we'll be sure to get the supply. That there are no non-human constraints at all... Only political difficulties, no material ones... But with 'iron laws' of economics hard-wired to 'reality' rather than imposed... I don't get it...
