A Critical Analysis of the Post-Growth Paradigm: A Compendium of Key Thinkers on Limits to Growth, Overshoot, and Degrowth in an Age of AI

Executive Summary: The Polycrisis and the Limits of Growth

The modern world is grappling with a "polycrisis"—a perilous convergence of interlocking environmental, social, and economic threats that challenges the very foundations of modern civilization.1 At the heart of this predicament lies a fundamental conflict: the relentless pursuit of exponential economic and population growth within the biophysical constraints of a finite planet. The ideology that prosperity is synonymous with perpetual expansion has become a grand narrative, shaping political, economic, and technological decisions worldwide. However, a growing body of expert analysis from diverse fields—from systems science to ecological economics—systematically challenges this narrative, arguing that it is not a pathway to a better future but a trajectory toward systemic instability.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the intellectual history and core concepts that define this critical worldview. It profiles the foundational thinkers who first articulated the dangers of unchecked growth, introduces the researchers who have since provided empirical metrics for planetary boundaries and ecological overshoot, and examines the economists and theorists who are building a coherent framework for a post-growth world. The analysis concludes by directly addressing a specific concern about artificial intelligence (AI), demonstrating that AI, in its current form, functions as a powerful accelerator of the very growth-addicted system that is driving the polycrisis. The problem, as this report will show, is not a lack of technological ingenuity but a deep-seated ideological addiction to a grand narrative that must be dismantled and replaced with one grounded in biophysical reality and a vision of flourishing within limits.

The Foundational Challenge: From Malthus to the World3 Model

The modern discourse on planetary limits finds its most influential articulation in the 1972 report The Limits to Growth (LTG). Commissioned by the Club of Rome, an informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders concerned with global issues, the report provided a clarion call for a fundamental reevaluation of human civilization's trajectory.3 The study was authored by a team of 17 researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with the principal authors being Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III.4

The report's innovative methodology employed a computer model known as World3, which applied the principles of system dynamics to simulate the complex interactions among five key global variables: population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and the consumption of non-renewable natural resources.6 At the time of the study, all these variables were increasing exponentially, and the model was used to explore the potential consequences if these trends continued. The authors intended their simulations to serve as a means of understanding the system's behavioral tendencies, rather than as absolute predictions.6

The World3 model's most critical finding was that, in the absence of significant alterations in resource utilization and environmental management, an "abrupt and unmanageable decrease" in both population and industrial capacity was highly likely.6 The World3 team generated different scenarios by varying assumptions, and their most widely cited "business as usual" scenarios projected a global system collapse sometime between the mid- and latter part of the 21st century.6 It is crucial to note that the World3 model's conclusions were not inevitable prophecies of doom. The authors also identified a set of assumptions that produced a "stabilized world" scenario, in which collapse was avoided and high welfare was maintained. This outcome was achieved by shifting societal priorities away from material consumption and toward health, education, and resource efficiency.8

Upon its release, The Limits to Growth faced severe criticism, particularly from economists who argued the model was simplistic and failed to account for the problem-solving capacity of technological progress.6 Critics charged that the report's predictions of resource exhaustion and economic collapse by the end of the 20th century had been proven incorrect by history. However, the World3 team countered that their work had been misunderstood or misrepresented, asserting that their critics had failed to propose any alternative models that could accommodate current growth processes while respecting planetary limitations.6

A deeper analysis of the report’s reception and its subsequent validation reveals a critical distinction. The model was not a linear prediction but a demonstration of causal relationships. The "collapse" scenarios were not a result of a technological failure but the inevitable outcome of a specific ideological input: the grand narrative of endless growth and consumption. Subsequent analyses, including a 2021 review by the Club of Rome, have shown that empirical data have closely aligned with the "business as usual" scenarios from the original report, lending a powerful historical validation to its core message.7 The enduring accuracy of the qualitative relationships modeled in World3—the feedback loops and non-linear dynamics—suggests that the most important and robust part of the model was not its specific numerical parameters but its structural understanding of the system itself. This underscores the necessity of a systems-level perspective on the polycrisis, one that recognizes that the fundamental challenge is not technical, but a flawed worldview.

The Biophysical Reality of Overshoot: Measuring the Unseen

While "The Limits to Growth" provided a theoretical framework for understanding planetary boundaries, other researchers developed empirical metrics to quantify this abstract concept, thereby moving the debate from simulation to measurement. These tools provided a tangible basis for understanding the idea of "overshoot"—the state in which humanity's demand on Earth's ecosystems exceeds the planet's regenerative capacity.

The concept of the "ecological footprint" was developed by William Rees, a human ecologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, and his then-PhD candidate, Mathis Wackernagel.9 This quantitative tool is based on energy and material flows and estimates the area of productive ecosystems required to sustain a given human population or economic activity. It has been instrumental in reopening the debate on human carrying capacity and has been widely adopted by governments, NGOs, and academics as a key sustainability indicator.9 Through their work, Rees and Wackernagel have shown that humanity's ecological footprint is at least 70% larger than the biosphere's regenerative capacity, which is to say that humanity is consuming resources and generating waste at a rate that would require 1.7 Earths to sustain.11

A complementary, multi-dimensional framework for assessing planetary limits is the "planetary boundaries" model, developed by a group of scientists led by Johan Rockström and Will Steffen.12 This framework defines a "safe operating space for humanity" by identifying nine global processes where human activities threaten the functioning of the Earth system.12 The latest update to this framework, published in 2023, concluded that six of the nine boundaries have now been transgressed, including climate change, biosphere integrity, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycles).12 This multifaceted, scientific evidence provides a powerful confirmation of the state of overshoot. The planetary boundaries framework also highlights the interdependence of these processes, emphasizing that a failure to respect one boundary increases the risk of crossing others, reinforcing the need for a holistic, systems-based approach to the polycrisis.12

The illusion of "green growth" in developed nations was systematically exposed by the work of researchers like Thomas O. Wiedmann on the "material footprint" of nations.15 Wiedmann's research distinguishes between a production-based and a consumption-based metric for resource use. The material footprint, a consumption-based indicator, accounts for all raw material extraction, both domestic and imported, required to satisfy a country's final demand.16 Using this metric, Wiedmann's research found that developed nations' reported achievements in "decoupling" economic growth from resource use were "smaller than reported or even nonexistent".15 This is because wealthy countries have simply outsourced their resource-intensive production to other countries through international trade, thereby shifting the environmental burden and creating a statistical illusion of efficiency at home.16 Furthermore, his work established a direct correlation between economic growth and resource consumption, showing that for every 10% increase in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), the average national material footprint increases by 6%.15

The work of Rees, Rockström, and Wiedmann, taken together, provides a powerful and empirically backed confirmation of the state of ecological and material overshoot. The problem is not a simple, technical issue but a fundamental, biophysical reality. The apparent decoupling of resource use from economic growth in some nations is a statistical anomaly created by global supply chains. This reality will be brought into stark relief as the limits to growth are felt on a global scale. This collective body of work demonstrates that the concept of "overshoot" is not based on a single, isolated idea but on a convergence of evidence from multiple scientific disciplines.

Table: The Multi-Faceted Evidence of Overshoot

Energy and Civilization: The Unavoidable Physics

To understand the core biophysical constraints on human civilization, it is essential to consider the work of Vaclav Smil. An interdisciplinary researcher and prolific author, Smil has consistently and dispassionately articulated the fundamental role of energy and material flows in shaping human history and determining our future. His work provides the foundational "physics" for the arguments of other thinkers in this report.

In his monumental work Energy and Civilization: A History, Smil posits that energy is the "only universal currency" and is "necessary for getting anything done".17 He provides a panoramic, interdisciplinary account of how human progress, from pre-agricultural foraging societies to today's fossil fuel-driven civilization, has been driven by our unique ability to harness energy flows outside our bodies systematically.17 The epochal transition to fossil fuels, in particular, fundamentally reshaped everything from agriculture and industry to transportation, economics, and quality of life.

Smil's analysis extends beyond history to offer a crucial dose of realism regarding the present and future. His work challenges the notion of a simple or easy transition to renewable energy. He points out that while a shift from fossil fuels is necessary, it is not a transition to a zero-impact energy system. The infrastructure required for renewable energy—solar panels, wind turbines, and, most notably, batteries—is highly dependent on the intensive mining of raw materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite.18 This process raises a multitude of its own environmental and human rights concerns and is energy-intensive itself. The transition from a carbon-based energy system to a renewable one is, therefore, a shift from a

fossil-fuel problem to a materials and mining problem. This nuance is crucial, as it shows that a technological "fix" that is not accompanied by a fundamental reduction in total energy and material consumption simply trades one set of environmental and social problems for another. Smil's work provides a compelling reminder that all civilizational progress, including our proposed solutions, is inextricably tied to the laws of physics and the biophysical limits of the planet.

The Post-Growth Paradigm: Economics Beyond Expansion

Having established the biophysical reality of limits and overshoot, several thinkers have dedicated their work to developing a coherent economic and social alternative to the growth imperative. This intellectual tradition provides a framework for how human society might transition away from its current unsustainable trajectory.

A foundational figure in this space is Herman E. Daly, a leading ecological economist who served as a senior economist at the World Bank.19 Daly developed the concept of a "steady-state economy," defined as an economic system with a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population, both maintained by a low and constant flow of natural resources and waste.20 Daly's model provides a direct contrast to mainstream economics, which assumes that the human economy is an isolated system, independent of the ecosphere. Daly’s approach views the economy as an open subsystem embedded within a finite natural environment.20 He is careful to distinguish a steady-state economy, which is a deliberate policy goal, from economic stagnation, which is an unwelcome failure of a growth-addicted economy.20

Building on these ideas, the degrowth movement emerged, proposing a radical reorganization of politics and economics to achieve reduced resource and energy use.21 Key thinkers in this movement include Serge Latouche, Jason Hickel, and Giorgos Kallis.22 The core tenet of degrowth is not a call for recession or a return to a primitive lifestyle. Instead, it is a proposal for a "planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being".23

Jason Hickel, a prominent advocate for degrowth, directly challenges the notion of "green growth," arguing that "absolute decoupling" of economic activity from resource use is not feasible.26 He contends that we must liberate ourselves from our dependence on economic growth, starting with wealthy nations, and pursue a vision of "radical abundance." This vision prioritizes a different kind of prosperity—one that emphasizes sharing, mutual aid, and a shorter working week, leading to more opportunities for leisure, community, and reconnection with nature.23 The degrowth hypothesis posits that such a social transformation is not only necessary but also desirable and possible.21

A constructive and widely read articulation of this paradigm is found in Tim Jackson's book, "Prosperity Without Growth."28 Jackson provides a clear and definable vision for a post-growth economy, showing how it is possible to protect employment, facilitate social investment, reduce inequality, and deliver both ecological and financial stability without the perpetual pursuit of exponential growth.28

The collective message from these thinkers is that a decline in production and consumption is unavoidable, whether by design or by disaster. Their work shifts the central question to how we can continue to grow. How can we flourish in a world without growth? The intellectual frameworks of Daly, Hickel, and Jackson provide a crucial roadmap for a transition to a more stable, equitable, and resilient civilization.

AI and the Polycrisis: A Contemporary Case Study

Artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a potent, contemporary case study for applying the principles of limits, overshoot, and degrowth. While AI is a tool with vast potential for various applications, a critical analysis of its current trajectory reveals that it primarily functions as a growth accelerator that exacerbates the very problems it is often positioned to solve.

The energy and resource demands of AI are immense and continue to grow rapidly. While some of the initial focus was on the energy-intensive process of model training, the surge in public adoption has shifted attention to the footprint of AI "inference," or the real-time use of AI models.29 The numbers are significant. For example, a median text prompt for Google's Gemini Apps consumes an estimated 0.24 watt-hours of energy, while a typical 400-token response from Mistral's "Le Chat" assistant reports a marginal impact of 1.14 grams of CO2e and 45 milliliters of water.29 These figures vary widely across the industry, with some estimates for a single ChatGPT prompt being as high as 3 watt-hours, highlighting a lack of standardized, independent metrics.29

A closer examination of these claims of efficiency, often touted by technology companies, reveals a crucial nuance. The reported energy and water consumption figures typically only account for the active use of processor chips (GPUs and TPUs), overlooking critical real-world elements such as the power consumed by supporting CPUs, the energy used by idle machines provisioned for traffic spikes, and the significant energy and water overhead from data center cooling systems.31 As a result, many public estimates represent a "theoretical efficiency instead of true operating efficiency at scale".32 For instance, a 2022 Google report indicated that 60% of its machine learning energy use came from inference, demonstrating that the environmental cost is not a one-time training fee but a perpetual, and rapidly scaling, operational cost.30

The most profound issue with AI in this context is its function. It is a technological product that fundamentally reinforces the ideology of endless growth. It seeks to solve problems of scarcity and inefficiency by accelerating the very processes that are causing the polycrisis. The per-unit energy consumption of a query may decrease, but the total number of queries and users is growing exponentially. This is a digital manifestation of the Jevons Paradox, where increased efficiency leads to an increase, rather than a decrease, in total consumption. For AI to be a genuine solution, it would have to be deployed not to accelerate consumption but to facilitate a more equitable, efficient, and ultimately smaller-scale society. The current reality is that AI is built on a physical, material foundation of chips, data centers, and vast amounts of energy and water.30 It is not a magical, dematerialized solution but a new layer of complexity that adds to the human enterprise's total environmental burden.

Synthesis and Conclusion: The Need for a Grand Narrative Shift

The analyses of the thinkers profiled in this report—from the systems models of the Club of Rome and the quantitative metrics of Rees and Wiedmann to the economic alternatives of Daly and the degrowth movement—all converge on a single, inescapable conclusion: the fundamental problem is not a lack of technological ingenuity but a grand narrative of endless growth that is biophysically impossible and sociologically destructive.

This grand narrative, which has been the dominant ideology of the past two centuries, is a flawed operating system. It treats the human economy as an isolated system divorced from the finite ecosphere, and it equates human flourishing with a continuous increase in material consumption. The Club of Rome's analysis concluded that the "enemy" is not pollution or climate change, but our "changed attitudes and behaviour".3 The polycrisis is the logical, systemic outcome of an ideology that is at odds with reality.

Technology, including AI, operates as a tool within this system. It can, and does, create remarkable efficiencies and offer incredible benefits. However, as long as the underlying system is programmed for perpetual growth, technology will be deployed to accelerate that growth, rather than questioning its fundamental premise. AI, with its vast energy and material footprint, and its function as a productivity and consumption booster, is not a solution to the polycrisis but a manifestation of the very ideology that is driving it.

The central choice humanity faces is not whether or not growth will end, but how it will end. We can either continue on the current trajectory and face the "uncontrollable decline" of a systemic collapse, or we can choose to consciously and equitably plan for a transition to a post-growth world. The work of these experts provides the intellectual and empirical foundations for this new narrative—a vision of a resilient, equitable, and thriving civilization that finds prosperity not in more, but in enough.

Recommendations for Further Study

To deepen an understanding of this critical subject, the following foundational texts and frameworks are recommended for study:

• The Limits to Growth: The original 1972 report and its updates for a comprehensive understanding of systems dynamics and the core "overshoot and collapse" thesis.

• The Ecological Footprint: The work of William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel for a practical, quantitative metric of humanity's impact.

• The Material Footprint of Nations: The research of Thomas O. Wiedmann to understand the illusion of decoupling and the global reality of resource consumption.

• Energy and Civilization: A History: The work of Vaclav Smil for an essential grounding in the biophysical laws that govern all societal development.

• Steady-State Economics: The writings of Herman Daly for a foundational understanding of a viable economic alternative.

• Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World: The work of Jason Hickel for a modern, accessible, and political articulation of the degrowth paradigm.

• Prosperity Without Growth: The analysis of Tim Jackson for a constructive and positive vision of a post-growth society.

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