Can the economy grow forever? 

4:00 Just wanted to note that the reason why German's emmisions decreced was because, instead of producing goods from their own borders, they instead made Asian countries like China and others produce those goods, and then import them back. This is known as "exported emmisions" In the end, the world's emmisions increased along with the GDP, because GHG emmisions and economic growth are *very strongly* correlated.

The problem is, only looking at the total value produced doesn't show who's benefitting from those values. Infinite growth doesn't necessarily benefit everyone but the toll on the planet WILL be felt by everyone

The best way to describe the present economy is 08' 2.0. Yes stocks are at a discount and things will eventually get better but my monthly living expense is up $3750 from $1600 and I'm left wondering what retirement have in store for me 5years down the line, I'm ill-prepared tbh, my 401k gains are zero-nothing and my stock portfolio?...OH WELL!

I was first introduced to economics in secondary school. I still remember when I first opened the academic book of economics, the first page read, "Wants are unlimited, but the resources are not." I didn't get what it really meant back then, but it is starting to make sense now more than ever.

As someone who now buys less, I find my economic utility has gone up (I'm happier). In a sense, this means the economy has grown in my individual experience, because my utility is higher. But my contribution to GDP had gone down. It is our perpetual obsession with using GDP that pigeonholes this conversation. We need to appreciate how bad GDP is as a metric. As one example, GDP could imply many people dying could be constructive for the economy, as long as we spent enough money in a hopeless endeavor to try to save those lives. GDP is purely about spend, not outcomes. It mistakes spending for happiness, and that is only partially true some of the time.

I always found it odd that a company could be consistently profitable but have its stock price drop because they weren't growing.

" *The earth has enough resources to fillup everyone needs but not everyone greed* ." -*_MAHATMA GANDHI_*

The biggest benefit to post growth economy is the fact that products can be developed to perfection, as for today, most products are designed to break down after an estimated time period to force customers to pay more. This is why the right to repair movement is so important as it is taking a step towards post growth economy by making product breakdowns less profitable for the company.

Well, logically, in this finite world, we should be recycling the less valueable to create more value out of them. For example, the old phones, cars, etc., that has been so outdated or not being used because there's simply not enough people on the planet to use them, can be recycled and the material can be used to create items with higher value. This however raise another question, what is valuable? We humans are very bad at valueing something, and value is a relatively vague concept after all.

Perhaps most importantly of all; should we listen to the rich elites who run the World Economic Forum, or should our futures be decided by the majority of people who don't attend a yearly conference in the swiss alps?

There was some good moments in this video, but I'm disappointed that whenever infinite growth is discussed, it's merely seen as something abstract that some people want to achieve or just a thing that has its own will. The video never addresses the issue *why* infinite growth is really happening. Surely if there constantly more people on earth and more products/services are created that leads to growth, but ultimately infinite (specifically economic) growth starts from the creation of majority of money (not cash, but zeros and ones) by banks granting loans. As money is created from thin air with interest, it automatically creates a situation where there is constantly more debt than there is actual money to pay off that debt. That leads to a situation where everyone needs to get more money to survive as "the game" basically forces a portion of its players to eventually run out of money.

When people say about a goal of 0 carbon emission nation, I wonder if they just forget about the supply chains that relocation to or still exist in their foreign nations. Because then the campaign would mostly mean pushing the responsibility of handling climate change to the nations that rely on production and resource extraction industries and are less prosperous, meaning they will be less likely to be able to invest in tech to reduce the emission rate. In a lot of cases, I just find these campaigns very shallow.

I'm all for a post growth economy. As an example, in Belfast, a shipyard that could've been used to build polluting yachts for billionaires, was turned into a wind turbine building facility; the jobs were kept, and both the engineers and the shipyard were repurposed in a beneficial way. We need a lot more of this, at every level of our economy.

Changes in time allocation illustrate this beautifully. A family in America used to spend multiple hours every week on tasks such as manually washing and hanging laundry (even though they owned fewer clothes), carrying buckets of water, prepping meals and cooking them, etc. There are also a lot of tasks that people even further back in time had to tackle: combing wool, spinning, weaving and stitching to make blankets and clothes, for example. It's amazing how the invention of new technologies changed how we use that time resource; we gained so many hours every week that no longer need to be spent on providing food, potable water, heat and hygiene. If we were content to live at that level now, we could spend 90% of our hours idle. Of course, culture changed and modern industrialized societies view that level of lifestyle to be horrifyingly impoverished. With increasingly efficient conveniences came increasingly acquisitive habits. Apparently we'd rather spend 50hrs a week working multiple jobs to be permanently indebted for objects that didn't even exist a century ago but are now considered basic necessities. We'll need to overcome that if we want a sustainable economy.

Of course most economist would believe that new ideas would solve everything, they love growth.

a yes, the two economic opinions of "hey guys the planet is dying maybe we should do something" and "im sure we'll figure something out later".

Without infinite growth "people would fight over the value that already exists". *stares in the last 100 some-odd years of nonstop warfare*

There is more then enough resources and technology on earth for every single individual to have exponentially increased wealth, to barely work, or to not work at all. The fundamental issue is the system of distribution, advances in technology do not lead to increases in wages on the contrary, increases in technology typically results in a decrease of real wages and a decrease in self-sufficiency and independence. As the property of these technologies are owned by few and their intellectual rights are secret and patented, an increased system of production, results in an ever increasing system of inequality. Yet the fundamental mode of production does not change, the capitalistic system is discouraged and hostile towards permanent system of sufficiency. The capitalistic system therefore produces self made shortages, the majority of value destroyed. As in a capitalist mode of production, overproduction is encouraged a fundamental contradiction of value emerges, if everyone was able to live comfortably for a minuscule amount of work, the overall productivity of the capitalist system drastically decreases. As an example take a sandwich shop, the sandwich shop's food is only edible for a single day, at the current price the majority of food can be thrown away and still maintain a profit, and as a shortage in food creates much greater loss then over buying of the product, the shop maintains the system of created scarcity, throwing away large sections of value. The food could theoretically be given at the end of the day, however in such environment sees a decrease in profit, many would choose not buy the food until the end of the day, and decreases the perceived value of the food in the minds of individuals, if it is completely free for certain parts of the day. The same fundamental principle applies to a cut in prices. To maintain ever increasing profits for the capitalist class, workers must have disposable income, yet in the current system encourages paying workers the smallest possible share of earnings. The solution is to produce money sinks, things which every individual requires and increase the prices of these exponentially, in this current environment, the price of the bottom line is contentiously raised and saving is discouraged, if not impossible, thusly in an ever increasing environment of loss of value, spending is encouraged. The solution to this is simple, describe these things which all humans require to live including water, clothing food, and housing, as a human right and produce it for the general population, this would alleviate the fundamental crisis's of the modern era and the industrial basis is present to provide for it. Under capitalism however if these sinks are removed one of the primary reasons for working is removed thereby seeing a large decrease in income and productivity for the capitalist class. Thusly ownership is the safety mechanism of capitalism, people's ancestral land becomes commodified, and sold at an exponential rate. In truth people's livelihood has not increased by a substantial amount since the 1960s, production has increased drastically and wages have stagnated and even substantially fallen amongst the younger generation. Thusly the issue is the underlying system, under the current mode of production, overall increases in living cannot exist.

"We have to find a way to benefit for everyone while also taking care of the planet" Hmm i wish there was an economic system that doesn't produce unnecessary trendy things that will go to waste in a short time and end up in the ocean.

It's terrifying to think that the first and foremost goal of every country is increasing GDP while the planet is dying and future generations will probably suffer from it. Like the only important thing is growth, is money, more and more, better and better each year. When in reality, it's worse. Truly a terrible time to live in, and I don't know if that time when a solution just magically happens would come or not.

The part that irks me in this video is that it speaks about only developed countries...We developed countries face the consequences of climate change because of their greed and colonialism. The saddest part is we don't even have luxury thinking about the two solutions mentioned above (sigh)...

Don't forget what these guys really want : "You will won nothing and be happy". In other world foll you into thinking you have to have them everything you have to save the planet while they become even richier

We invented the heat pump. It makes 4 units of heat out of 1 unit of energy. If we switch out all oil- and gas- heaters immediately with heat pumps, we can save 75% of energy needed for heating, drastically cut all CO2 emmissions for building operations - and give consumers more money to spend in the economy.

"In partnership with the World Economic Forum" Immediate red flag

5:26 Soooo... At the end it's stupidity vs discomfort. Like, you have a gas leak. Would you prefer: A. Continue working so you can eventually buy a new house model that prevents gas leaks entirely B. Stand up from your comfy chair and go fix the pipe

Short answer: The earth is finite, so no.

Imaging technology would fix our problems is fallacious for many reasons. But for me, the big reason is that many issues CAN already be fixed with our current technology. In our current world, technological inventions can already fix many issues. But they're just not doing it since it's not profitable. For instance, we can solve world hunger tomorrow. It would be very expensive, and very difficult but it's not impossible. The only issue is that preventing people from starvation would cost money, and no one would profit. At least not immediately. So it's nonsense to just claim to wait for the next upgrade or new invention since no matter what engineers create, it's not going to solve problems unless someone can make a billion from it.

Kind of a crazy assertion that removing dependence on working to survive would somehow lower demand and need for goods.

Really like how this video is about economies producing value and labor is mentioned all of 1 time.

" we have to find a way to benefit everyone" most billionaire and world leader's will disagree with this statement, their greed knows no limit.

I think the solution to current dilemma on how economy should evolve should have both idealistic and realistic aspects. "idealism without realism is a mere illusion and Realism without Idealism is a mere object"...

It's amazing how our entire worldview and philosophies are built around a construct some humans created. The fact that global corporations that are still incredibility profitable are firing people because they missed growth targets is insane. I personally would love to see a world where we put human ingenuity into reworking out views around economy!

Infinite growth doesn't seem viable when the undertaking of creating new values (even intangible value like the cloud, AI, software, etc.) ultimately relies on the consumption of hard, finite resources: humans to build and maintain those new values, food to feed humans, soil and livestock to make the food, lumber too build homes to house humans and infrastructure for those new values, water to quench humans and other livestock to create food, minerals to build computers to enable humans, oil to fuel vehicles for transportation of goods and humans, etc.

5:35 It's easier to imagine the end of our civilization as we know it than to imagine the end of Capitalism.

New technology always solves old problems, but create new problems of their own. And we don't know what new technology will come and what help it will do. We must act today, move away from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have damaged environment, as well as give advantage to war mongers

There's an assumption that innovation will increase exponentially as well. It could be that all of the scientific and engineering discoveries and innovations are still in a process of being worked out since the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution (and perhaps even since the invention of agriculture). Who's to say that in 100 or 500 or 1000 years time innovation won't become very slow (or stop?) as the limits of our understanding of the physical world are reached? It's easy to see scientific progress as inevitably coming up with new things in our lifetimes but in the broad sweep of human existence there is surely a hard limit to human understanding of reality and so a hard limit to the innovations that follow from that understanding.

Economies grow based on consumption. Consumption is based on population. The last 200 years the human population increased absurdly, and it is now slowing down rapidly. In order to keep economic growth with a stagnant population growth, businesses will need to make the population to consume more. However, money distribution is completely uneven and there is a limit at to how much a person will be able to consume. Added to the resource issue, it is definetly impossible to have eternal economic growth. But the rich and powerful will push to the limits....

The moment I saw world economic forum. My trust in this video plummeted.

at a buffet, i personally sneak corndogs into the buffet so others can enjoy them. I hide 6 corndogs in my jacket pockets. it then, is a joy for me to see other patrons of the establishment eat my corndogs thinking they were part of the buffet.

First of all the most important: ALL WEF members regardless if they act as individuals or as companies should be expropriated. They should give back all their accumulated wealth stolen from ordinary people. Than we can speak about restructuring our economies at a level playing field.

So to summarize, we don't know

"eternally growing economy is necessary to improve peoples lives" - coming from India which has highest GDP growth yet so many people suffering because all the benefits have gone to a few people while the rest are where they were or worse, I find this very SUS. PS. I myself have lived in the US and i have seen with my own eyes the huge inequality between have and have nots in the worlds "richest" country, where people have to turn to Gofundme to get medical care.

2:58 the definition of technology and efficiency is that they DON'T generate new demand that uses up MORE resources. If that is the result it 's anti-technology and pure waste and we should punish that.

With wealth more distributed everyone would be more sufficient in their wants and needs. When that happens it frees up time for them to pursue more creative endeavours. Within these creative endeavours are bursts of innovative businesses and solutions to our problems. So I believe that the post growth economy is actually disguised as a more effective way to grow our economy.

infinte growth in a finite world is absurd. but if we look at the stars... there is room out there for everything.

There has been a wave of violance all over my city: shootings, stores and busses are set on fire, etc. I would like if ted-ed made a video explaining waves of violance, how it spreads and most importantly how can they be stopped.

The question in 1:04 asks if infinite growth is possible in this planet. What if we colonize and terraform other planets?

They're not 'resources', and this way of viewing the ecosystem that we ourselves are a part of is what needs to change first.

Idk it feels like the concept of infinite growth doesn't seem like a bad thing now (to people who hope to reap the benefits of said growth at one point) but throw in stress, that climate issue mentioned earlier, a couple of wars, and a country significantly more powerful stealing resources from other countries for years- in a landscape of other ultra powerful countries doing the same to other countries, and it feels like we've cooked up a recipe for disaster. Not only are humans in a race to destroy ourselves, the entire planet itself is revolting against us

Animation is always the best part of this channel.

"Who gets to decide what's necessary?" The customer. There's a reason why we say, the customer is always right ... and it's not what most people think.

I am confident that a carbon negative population is possible and only possible through innovation. For infinite growth we need to be interplanetary because the resources on earth are of course finite. Being able to colonize mars and then other planets are not only important for the sustainment of the human race but instrumental for our growth.

Both are actually happening at the same time (it’s will continue). It’s not going to be either or. It might be a competition to see which approach gets the best results. Or a collaboration to see what both approaches bring to the table to solve our overall issues. We might still be able to grow the economy but need to/will restructure the economy and society significantly for the planet and for people. Change is inevitable so I think restructuring will happen. Restructuring is also an opportunity to increase value and innovate. There are also other paths that this video doesn’t highlight. For example we could end up getting a split. A new civilization that will spin off from ours (new planet/live in space/upload itself to the cloud 😂) if we survive long enough.

Either we'll learn to recycle resources and run out of labour or run out of resources without being able to replenish them.

The problem is that we are asking economists about their environmental opinion instead of asking oh let’s say… an environmentalist

The entire premise of measuring economy by what gets sold on a market is already flawed from the outset. None of us ordinary people care how much profit is made off the things we use in our everyday lives. I care that I have a home, not that someone made money by renting me a home. I care that I have food, not that the food I eat provides marginal value for agribusiness. The entire conversation around how we should structure our world is wholly dominated by capitalism, and everything is fed through the lens of the profit motive. That's the only reason anyone even considers the question of unlimited growth, rather than the most obvious human question of "how do we get everyone what they need to live a good life?" Unlimited growth is a fantasy of capitalism, bound as it is by a simple, immutable economic truth: the rate of profit declines over time. The technological innovations alluded to in this video do make production more efficient, and therefore give humans more access to resources. But from the perspective of the capitalist, the only thing that matters is *their own* profit. They can make more profit in the short term with new technology, but as that technology permeates the market, the individual capitalist's edge disappears. They need to find new ways to "grow" just to stay abreast of the competition. Hence, "growth" is constantly necessary only for the *capitalist enterprise* to survive. The effects on the environment or the people living under this system are irrelevant in this framework. So yes, we desperately need to reshape our entire productive system. It is fundamentally impossible for the capitalist mode of production to maintain growth without hollowing out the physical and social world in which it operates.

Very well articulated; I wish I had more time for trial and error, but I'll be 56 in October and I need ideas and advice on what investments to make to set myself up for retirement, especially with the looming inflation and recession; my goal is to have a portfolio of at least $500k at the age of 60.

There is one lie I am not willing to forgive: That the economy as it has been is efficient in creating value.

The key word here is energy. Energy is the ultimate currency. Economy grow as long as human keep improving in converting energy. You cant create food if the sun is not enough. You cant create things if there is no energy.

Gosh, I've been wondering about this all day long since I got into economics. You guys should've made this video earlier!!!

Everyone needs more than there salary to be financially stable. The best thing to do with your money is to Invest it rightly because money left for saving always end up used with no returns

Can I just say the music here was incredible in itself and fit the video perfectly 😍

First time I've heard of a 'post-growth economy'. Now that idea is firmly lodged in my brain because it makes so much sense.

Soon governments will change the definition of Celsius to say we're under 1.5 degrees

I deem it highly unlikely for such an economic system to be implemented at a global scale (which would be necessary in order to be effective), as Companies and specific Individuals, who are prospering from the current economic system, are holding tremendous amounts of both political and social power. An Implementation of such a system would basically "turn the whole world upside down", which leads to appealing less attractive to "ordinary" people.

Infinite growth: *exists* Finite resources: *”Im gonna stop you right there”*

Okay, what if instead of trying to solve income inequality and guarantee all of those things first so that the mass production slows down eventually, we just shift the current focus of interest (entertainment and luxury) of the people, hence of the big companies too, towards more to the environmental, public transportation, and healthcare side. It would have been good, if possible, to alter the focus of the people (a.k.a the cash stream), however you could just convince the big companies to redirect a big part of their research and growth into making those areas better instead. I know it's a stretch, but the government could also compensate them for their "lose" during that time (until the improvements in those areas are sufficient enough). That way, there is no disturbances in the wealth state (for which we can care later), and we save our planet and us in this process of finding our rhythm of this 'economy growth'.

I am surprised by the use of Germany as an example for reducing CO2 emissions. They have been shutting down nuclear plants, that emit no Greenhouse gas emissions, and replaced them with fossil fuels. This is catastrophic.

Sounds too good though it would never even come close to achievable. The %1 will never want to earn less money and have less power as they are mere humans after all, not driven by logic and sense but with hubris and greed. It may look like the general public would want such nice way of living but individually if you ask them, they'd want to have 2 coins rather than 1 coin. Post-Growth Economy is a nice sheet of music which we'll never get to see composed.

As long as you make sure enough people die every year with small amounts of unspent currency you can really make the growth look permanent until the very last moment though.

Can you make a video about the world economic forum, the great reset, and “you’ll own nothing and be happy” plan

Zygmunt Bauman tells us that we do not produce goods to satisfy our needs, it produce instead needs to satisfy the income of the world market. I read this in Liquid Modernity.

Am seriously looking forward to a post growth economy... Infinite growth is unsustainable

I have to politely disagree with what was said between 1:32 to 1:53. The phone isn't valuable per se. Nothing has inherent value. Not even existence itself. That is because value is an abstract concept created by us and maybe understood by other animal species. It does not exist outside our perception and imagination. Each individual gives a certain amount of subjective value to things, including its life (Hence why Suicide is a thing) time, money (Explaining why salary work is a thing), and even smartphones. If the amount of value a subject gives to, lets say, a phone that is selling at an Y amount of money, is X units of subjective value, if the subject values that Y amount of money less than X, it will buy the phone: Not because the phone has inherent value, but because that person values it more than the money the phone cost. The consumer MAY care about the process that went to create the thing that it buys, but at least I don't. Same thing with all my relatives and almost all my University teachers and classmates. Edit: Grammar.

Essa análise pincelou o problema, mas ignorou o maior problema: Dinheiro! Nosso dinheiro é controlado por governos que destroem o valor da economia mais rápido do é criado. Sim, o objetivo da Economia é gerar valor, mas nós deixamos um vazamento ser criado, e ninguém está vendo!!! Acredite ou não, já temos a solução para o problema: BITCOIN! A Economia tem um limite, não vai crescer indefinidamente, mas primeiro precisamos fechar o vazamento! É muito mais simples do que nos dizem.

This video is missing a crucial part of the story. The increase in the value of goods and services produced is *greater than proportional* to the increase in our use of non-renewables. Our machinery is only becoming more energy efficient every year, and most of this innovation has come through the private sector. For private firms to make investments and take risks, they need to see that those investments will be profitable in the future, for that you need a growing economy. The public sector coming in and saying we need to slow down and use less resources would only serve to end the innovation that the private sector brings and bring the nation to stagnation.

Within a couple of seconds of hearing "post-growth economy", I went from strongly against to skeptical to potentially in favour within seconds. It is potentially essential but certainly hard to time.

Economic growth should benefit everyone. Like in a lot of European countries where capitalism is used to generate an immense amount of resources and those resources are then used to pay for social services. Economic growth is good, but I think that it should benefit everyone.

According to what you present yourselves, you describe the envisioned "post-growth" economy as the economy of a Marxist, socialist/communist state, BUT a state that first became developed through a capitalist system and only afterwards starts to distribute all resources "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (Karl Marx, 1875) in a state-run economy. Observation: Marx mistakenly expected the British Empire to have been the first country to ever embrace communism exactly because of these growth-related issues (only that he had given these issues the all-comprising name of "capitalist exploitation" and put the blame on the private enterprise owners for these growth obsession phenomena, in addition to identifying the human traits of greed and thirst for fueling class distinction among people as a major underlying cause). Marx lived in London and saw how the British were running their empire. He would've laughed in case anyone told him that Russia and China would be the largest countries to embrace his doctrine after his death, as those countries had been struggling with poverty and it would've made no sense to him for poor countries to start allocating the few resources they have to a rather numerous population instead of BECOMING RICH FIRST. In short, communism was from the beginning designed for VERY rich, highly developed states in which there is already great wealth that is unequally distributed among the owners of large companies and enterprises (i.e. basically all world billionaires) and which awaits to be made accessible to the largest chunk of the population - the people without whom the businesses wouldn't survive in the first place (also search for "Global Inequality visualized" for that matter).

5:22 lmfao this made me laugh so much. Perfect animation for this point.

Change the economy slowly over time is the solution. Incremental adjustments are easier to do when we aren’t be rushed into it. Waiting for future human ingenuity is just pushing off the problem and may result in us crashing the economy into the problem later with zero plans to come out of it. We should be looking at us finding solutions now as the future ingenuity of past generations, we can’t pass the buck forever.

I used to think that it's unfair how developed countries have a headstart compared to the rest of the world because of their greed and colonialism in the past. But coming from a developing country, I later realized we are at a much better position than developed countries to not repeat what they did and to have a sort of 'clean slate' to build our countries via this "post-growth economy" proposition. But then of course it's easier said than done. There's still so many issues to address.

We are hitting limits everywhere including in productivity and technology...those 2 things were making labor obsolete anyways by default distorting "the consumer" variable. The model will have to change to meet the new reality.

Wait, we are going to let AI decide who is less necessary? Sounds like a great idea for a Hollywood movie!

0:01 when the video makes a turn for the worst

Listen, everything this video says is true, but all it serves to do is provide cover for the people who are actually responsible for the problems in this video: the world economic forum attendees and sponsors themselves. Now they can point to videos like this and say "see we're progressive, we know its a problem" then proceed to do nothing about it.

It does go up forever, since one of the most important inputs to the economy is time and time is infinite.

IF ONLY humans as species were peaceful in nature and does not need to allocate or spend resources, time, talent for weapons of destruction, then life on Earth might be much better

Limiting global warming as a priority is AN OPINION. This is where the video turns into an opinion column rather than an overview of economic views.

I always wondered how you tell people it's capitalism ruining our lives and the planet without saying the word capitalism. Brilliant/s

World Economic forum is composed of the most powerful companies around the world. They have the power to drastically change the socio-politico-economic system of rich countires, like the USA and even the whole world. But they can't just do that out of nowhere... unless it is for "altruistically saving the planet because this is our last hope". I believe their partnership with TED-Ed on this one is a nudge in getting what they want in the future.

the guy swetting at 5:24 was funny hahaha it was a *chuckles* I'm in danger moment x)

Infinite growth is not possible, nothing is Infinite. But, you can seem to expand infinitely if you constantly improve the efficiency of how you use your finite resources as well as expanding the pool of available resources (e.g. more advanced extraction techniques, ajd perhaps eventually asteroid mining).

The addiction to instant gratification that we get from ordering and getting useless things needs to be reduced.

we all have to start consuming less. it's as simple as that, but it's difficult when you've been raised your entire life to be a consumer.

Literally yesterday I'm just looking for this topic. What a timing!

It is fun but I don't really agree here. Maybe because of simplification, but you know you are talking about economic growth, but not taking account about things devaluating and recycling. The same phone that cost now 1000$ is gonna cost way less in 5 years. But this is not taken into account. And with recycling, the old mining materials are gonna end up back into the machine working to do better things. Thats the first point. The second one, when you are talking about energy. You know having to relie on fossil fuels to move is somehow a problem (beside the global warming thing) because we can run out of fuel to burn. But with EVs there are lots of ways to produce electricity. Most of them come from sun directly or indirectly which can still burn for billions years. You also have nuclear (here, the supply fuel is somehow different), and geothermal (nuclear too, just inside earth). And there are process to use this energy to produce goods (methane can be produce using sabatier principle, and everything). I'm not saying our economies are good (far from that actually, but that's not what I wanted to point). I'm just not at all fan of the video probably because of oversimplification. This may lead people link this vid, saying the same arguments than me saying people "you see, they advocate for changing but does not take everything into account", and it will confuse people, making them thinking that maybe we don't have anything to change.

Growing the economy doesn't always require more resources or energy. Sometimes it involves doing more with what you have or using less to make the same. Then those unused resources can be deployed elsewhere. This is particularly true of service economies, which are the majority of what the richest economies are made of.

There is still plenty of empty land for us to expand. Not to mention that the ocean occupies 70% of the surface of the earth. The constant flowing ocean currents are the perfect source of energy that we didn't know how to use.

brilliant idea to maintain those who are in power, in power, and those who are in poverty