Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful. And soon enough they'll all be ran on renewable energy.
OP said nothing about growing the population. His statement can be true even as world population growth is slowing.
Like many things, there may be no purely immaterial, but there is much (and increasing) practically immaterial.
> Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful.
There are limits to efficiency due to fundamental laws of physics. We're already hitting some, we might be far from others, but a) we may not hit all of them fast enough to met the demand of exponential growth, and b) after we hit them, we can't improve those machines/processes further.
we need to build the first solar power plant only using the output of a smaller solar plant, so electric digger, hydroponics for food, electric smelters etc. after that it's all downhill.
