Entropy, limits to growth, and the prospects for weak sustainability

In this paper, we analyze the consequences of mass and energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics foreconomic activity. In contrast to former studies, we deduce our results formally from a general model of production andconsumption. We show that in a static setting for economies containing irreversible processes, a non-zero resource input as wellas non-zero emissions are necessary to sustain a positive level of consumption. We generalize this result to a dynamic settingand apply it to the growth discussion and the sustainability discourse...