Today’s Globe and Mail featured a column by Gary Mason on a world without oil. “If you believe that the economy is structured in such a way that it needs to grow continually in order to survive,” it states, “then it will take an endless supply of energy to feed it. ” The article then raises the question, “How does an economy grow exponentially forever if the one element it needs more than anything to flourish is contracting with time?” This is a common refrain from environmentalists such as David Suzuki (here, here, here and likely a thousand other places): “it’s absurd to rely on economies based on constant growth on a finite planet.” But, is it? I’ll have more on this at Macleans in a couple of days, but this will serve as a technical primer.
Andrew Leach's energy and climate blog