> <i>In theory, yes, exponential growth of the economy can’t continue forever. But the hard limits are so far away that for almost all practical purposes today they can be treated as infinite. The limits only seem close when restricting one’s view to current technologies. But we have been consistently breaking technological limits for hundreds of years.</i><p>I think you dismiss this argument against exponential growth too easily. Yes, we've always been able to escape resource exhaustion in the past with better technology, but isn't the mantra of "progress studies" that technology is stagnating and that we can no longer sustain the exponential growth we've become so used to?<p>Reading techno-optimist viewpoints -- whether of the singularitarian flavor or the recent progress studies bent -- I always feel they do themselves a disservice by not taking more seriously the fact that for every species except modern humans, exponential growth has always been the beginning of a logistic curve, not something that can be sustained indefinitely. Yes, we are exceptional, but we are still subject to the laws of nature.<p>This is also where progress studies loses the veneer of a scientific inquiry and becomes revealed as a religion or a political party: the message is that exponential growth can and should be continued indefinitely, <i>if only the powers-that-be are willing to pour ever-increasing amounts of resources into our technology projects</i>.