This is the best summary of the situation I've seen. "An art collector may pay $1 million for a coveted painting. Very little energy is required. The painting

This is the best summary of the situation I've seen. "An art collector may pay $1 million for a coveted painting. Very little energy is required. The painting was produced long ago. It may even remain on display in the same location—only the name of the owner changing. Financial transactions that require no manufacture, transport, and negligible energy are said to be “decoupled” from physical resources. Plenty of examples exist in society, and are held up by economists as illustrating how we can continue to expand the economy without a commensurate expansion of resource needs... In summary, decoupling and substitution are touted as mechanisms by which economic growth need not slow down as energy and other resources become constrained. We can make money using less of the resource (decoupling) or just find alternatives that are not constrained (substitution), the thinking goes. And yes, this is backed up by loads of examples where such things have happened. It would be foolish to claim that we have reached the end of the line and can expect no more gains from decoupling or substitution. But it would be equally foolish to imagine that they can produce dividends eternally so that economic growth is a permanent condition." The rest of the book sketches out the hard physical constraints that we have to operate in over the next few centuries, and addresses some common questions I've seen here ("What about fusion?", "What about mining asteroids?", etc.) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#article_main https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#article_main