Economy & Banks

Posting here because I just UTFS and found this thread instead of dumping my query in AQA. Apologies if this has already been done to death.

For years Gordon Brown told us that the years of economic boom and bust were over and that we were on the track towards long term, sustainable economic growth. Of course we all know how wrong he turned out to be but the underlying ideal of long term sustainable economic growth still underpins a lot of the economic discourse I hear in the news. I understand how growth in the economy is linked to jobs and incomes and hopefully increases in standards of living, however what I don't understand is how long term, indefinite growth can ever be sustainable when it is ultimately dependent on a scarce supply of resources.

I can see all sorts of partial solutions (such as efficiency or innovation) that might keep any prospect of imminent collapse a little beyond the horizon but they don't solve the problem forever.

Presumably this is something that our pre-eminent economists will have thought deeply about and I'd be intrigued to learn more. I wonder if people could point me towards some sources (preferably non-technical) where I could read up on how perpetual growth can be made to work as a keystone of our economic policy?

relevant nef link here,

Tim Jackson argued that we must not return to the growth-based economy of previous times because we cannot move fast enough in technological terms to deliver ourselves from financial catastrophe, from resource catastrophe and from environmental catastrophe, simply by keeping our existing institutions. He highlighted what he saw as the three main tasks necessary to create a well-being economy: to establish the limits of our economy (particularly the resource limits); fix the economics (so well-being is delivered by the economy, so institutions do not rely on relentless consumption growth, and so the macroeconomy does not collapse as soon as people stop spending money on the high street; and change the social logic (the assumption that we are just selfish, materialistic, individualistic consumers).

Tim Jackson has written a related book about this, 'Prosperity without Growth'