Its likely true that there is diminishing marginal utility about having extra "stuff", that doesn't mean the additional gains are zero. Also not all the new wealth is just "extra stuff". Much of the world is still fairly poor. As countries begin to develop more and more of their citizens move away from having constant concerns about having their most basic needs met. Furthermore more resources allow us to pay attention to things like environmental concerns. If wealth is low enough people will accept a vast amount of environmental damage in order to assure their continued well being. As we get richer, we can devote more resources to this concern, and to other important concerns. Its not all wide screen TVs, and fancy cars.
As for your last sentence I simply disagree. I don't think our energy sources will run out. I'm not saying that fossil fuels are infinite, they aren't, but I don't see them as something that will be exhausted within a generation, and more importantly they are not are only source of energy. As they get more expensive, and we start to transition away from them, we could have a slow down of economic growth, perhaps even a severe one for a time (and an actual contraction for a shorter time), but while this could happen, and could be a major issue for the people who go through it, it will likely be a blip on the larger long term trend. True that trend can not continue forever. There are physical limits to the whole universe, and much smaller ones about the tiny part of it that we can use over say the next few centuries, but I don't see any reason to think the trend will stop soon, even if its possible that it will slow.
I think its very likely that a generation out we will use more energy (in total and per capita) than we do now, 100 years from now still more, 500 years from now even more, 1000 year more again, and so on for some time barring a major civilization threatening or destroying catastrophe (large scale nuclear war, comet or asteroid impact, large super-volcano eruption, or something similarly big) |
