No limits to growth

I just read this article at Energybulletin.net about peak oil. The article tells the tragic story of how oil companies long tried to suppress public knowledge of the reality of peak oil in order to bolster their own stock prices.

But the article also contains this assertion, which I have seen repeated over and over again in energy-policy discussions:

In a world where 850 million are still going hungry and 3 billion out of 6.5 billion live on less than $2 a day, stagnant oil production means an end to development models based on economic growth.

That is just not true. There are three reasons why it's wrong:

1. Growth does not require ever-increasing supplies of energy. If you have stagnant energy and increasing energy efficiency, you by definition have economic growth.

2. Growth also depends on technological progress. Every time we learn how to make something new - a computer, a cell phone, a social networking site - that's progress. In addition to being more energy-efficient, we can learn to make different kinds of things with the energy we use, and that is growth.

3. There are other sources of energy besides oil.

Denying peak oil has made oil companies look like self-serving underhanded fools, which they are. But asserting that economic growth should cease in response to peak oil makes energy-policy reformists look like we have a secret anti-capitalist agenda, which makes us too look like self-serving underhanded fools.

Growth is good - it has lifted humanity up out of the muck - and it theoretically has no limit. We should not denigrate it. What we should be doing is finding new ways to support it, with energy efficiency, alternative energy, and support for technological progress.