Bear with me while I make stuff up.

While I'm completely on board with the LTG thesis, and have been for more than three decades, I am also sympathetic to the idea that it's not a reason that should be invoked to halt progress. Millions of people are emerging from poverty every year in countries with high growth rates. At the same time, "mature" economies seem to have hit a wall.

Nothing contradictory here. It's possible that WE, in the "overdeveloped" economies, are in overshoot, whereas the people in less-developed economies, who after all consume much less resources per head, are still within the envelope. Resource prices are the key. Paradoxically, it's the rich countries who can ill afford to pay steep increases in the resources they consume just to maintain their standard of living; for countries where incomes are rising, increased resource costs are just one more element to be passed on.

From the point of view of the rich and powerful, everything's fine. As long as they have shifted their money from non-performing assets in the overdeveloped world to high-return investments in high-growth areas, it's all just business as usual.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}