Solar impacts on the sustainability of economic growth.

Mainstream economists have used various growth models to predict the interaction between sustainable economic growth and the endless accumulation of capital while environmental concerns and their negative externalities are left out, in most cases. In this paper, I present a structural economic model that explicitly allows for the interaction between an economy and an ecosystem. The proposed model indicates that—given a wide range of development and socio-economic infrastructure—while population growth might be a reason for the constant growth trajectory, it has an adverse effect due to the constraints of resources and the environment. This is because economic activities and population growth increase ecological disordering as they downgrade the environment, while the later element has a negative impact on living standards. The collected data focusing on different economic components show that the growth rate of GDP per capita may fall below zero as the population grows with the rate of capital accumulation and environmental depletion. Finally, considering different scenarios of utilizing solar energy for economic growth, a feasible endurance factor for sustainable development might promote the methods of using the substituted energy, focusing on solar energy. This, however, cannot be accomplished given the current speed and direction of technological progress and energy utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]