This article, formatted as a conversation, explores the limits of exponential economic growth in the extreme where we start being limited by physical problems like heat, energy, efficiency, etc. The most valuable conclusion, IMO, is that economic growth must be a phase because even at 2.5%/year we consume the Sun in a millenium and the galaxy in two millenia.
I liked the article, but I couldn’t help thinking of this xkcd titled “Physicists”: http://xkcd.com/793/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
This seems reasonable to me. Life outside a thermally gradiated Dyson hive never scaled well anyway.