The limits to growth debate

Abstract

Is indefinite economic growth possible? This question has bothered the minds of many economists since Adam Smith. While early economists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries believed that indefinite economic growth was an illusion, these views obscured since the turn of this century. Widespread recognition of growing environmental problems and increasing dependence of developed economies on limited supplies of non-renewable resources, restored the relevance of this question in the late 1960s. This has triggered the ‘limits-to-growth debate’ which has questioned the relevance, desirability and possibility of continuous growth. Various aspects have been emphasized, such as the influence of economic growth on human welfare and environmental degradation (Mishan, 1967), the influence of natural resource scarcity on economic growth (Meadows et al.1972), the existence of ‘entropic’ limits to growth (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971) or the consequences of economic growth in terms of ‘sustainable development’ (Pezzey 1989). This debate deserves attention because it forms the historical starting point for many empirical and theoretical research efforts on the relation between economic and environmental aspects.