It seems relevant to bring up the works of ecological economist Herman Daly again. His basic postulate is that the "growth" mantra of traditional economics is based upon the fallacy of ignoring the ecological costs of the use of natural resources.

Some links (from short to long documents):
http://dieoff.org/page88.htm

http://www.earthrights.net/docs/daly.html

http://www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/daly.htm

Growth is promoted by economists because they are paid by the financial industry (some indirectly). In a capitalist system people expect to get back more money than they put in when they invest. In truth there are only three ways this can happen: population growth, productivity growth and inflation. So economists need to promote growth otherwise capitalism wouldn't work.

I've tried to explore what a steady state economy would look like here:
Planning for a Steady State Economy

As I stated above, without population growth traditional investment won't work properly and therefore things like saving for retirement will have to be redesigned. Many pre-industrial societies existed without growth, so this not a new idea. As resources become limited people will have to take steps to limit growth or face catastrophe.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape