Now I got a bit of a telling-off the other day (see link below) from Tim Worstall (Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute) for challenging his view that “Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet … [is] Easy-Peasy”.

I got the impression that any notion that we might be in for a period (let’s say a decade or two for starters) of trend economic contraction … or at best economic stagnation … was so much tosh according to Mr Worstall.

Mr Worstall concluded by saying, “simple straighforward market economics already encourages the maximum of the economic growth we can have, adding value, while minimising the sort we cannot, resource consumption …”.  So there.

Here, you can see the exchange between us …

http://tinyurl.com/6whr6zc

PS In my view, the 5 most significant books on this matter of where we’re heading these days are: Heinberg’s ‘The End of Growth’; Kunstler’s ‘The Long Emergency’; Michael-Greer’s ‘The Long Descent’; Martenson’s ‘The Crash Course’ and Tainter’s ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’. I know, I know … hardly cheery stuff, but taken together they paint a consistent picture of how events could well unfold over the next decade or so. The politico-economic Establishment tends generally to pooh-pooh the lot, I think. Economic growth is what we (desperately) need, so economic growth is what we shall have. Yeah, right.