The Entropy Law and the impossibility of perpetual economic growth

TL;DR

This paper argues that due to thermodynamic entropy and environmental limits, perpetual economic growth is fundamentally impossible, as increasing entropy depletes finite ecosystem resources and causes unpredictable environmental shifts.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic perspective to economic growth, highlighting the incompatibility of continuous growth with entropy increase and ecosystem constraints.

Findings

Entropy accumulation limits resource availability.

Environmental thresholds cause potential abrupt shifts.

Long-term growth is constrained by thermodynamic laws.

Abstract

Every production-recycling iteration accumulates an inevitable proportion of its matter-energy in the environment, lest the production process itself would be a system in perpetual motion, violating the second law of Thermodynamics. Such high-entropy matter depletes finite stocks of ecosystem services provided by the ecosphere, hence are incompatible with the long-term growth in the material scale of the economic process. Moreover, the complex natural systems governing such stocks respond to depletion by possibly sudden environmental transitions, thus hindering markets' very ability to adapt to the new equilibrium conditions. Consequently, uncertainty of critical resilience thresholds constrains material economic growth.