The Crash Course, Revised Edition

CHAPTER 29Closing the Book on Growth

It is time to close the book on growth.

Exponential economic growth is in its final days. The only question is whether we recognize this early, on our own terms, or later, as a consequence of a series of regrettable collapses resulting in enormous suffering to humans and ecosystems.

The economic predicament, as I've laid it out, goes like this:

1. Over time, debt‐based money grows exponentially due to interest, and this is an immutable feature of the system.
2. Due to nonproductive loans that can't be serviced with interest flows, the accumulation of debt also “goes exponential” over time. To combat this, central banks lower interest rates until they run out of room (at the zero bound).
3. Debt is a powerful motivator, and therefore exponential debt drives exponential economic growth and behaviors.
4. Any growth, but especially exponential economic growth, requires ever‐increasing amounts of energy to sustain its order and complexity.
5. Because energy cannot, through any combination of known technologies, grow exponentially into the future forever, economic complexity will continue to expand until that process chews through all the energy, at which point it all collapses.

The only sure conclusion from this line of thinking is that someday our current model of economic growth will end and something new will take its place. It's only a question of when.

Of course, simple logic concludes that nothing can keep growing forever, and I suspect most people ...