Canada has something called an eco-fiscal commission, and it has a blog.

Technological change has transformed the quality of our lives. It has removed terrible diseases that maimed, crippled, and killed — plague, tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery, smallpox, and leprosy, to mention only the most common. In 1900, death from botulism and ptomaine poisoning from contaminated food was common. Chemical additives virtually eliminated these killers and allow us to live long enough to worry about the long run cancer causing effects of some of these additives. Now they are being replaced by safer preservatives.

Technological change has also transformed how we make both existing and new commodities. Most new technologies useless of all inputs per unit of output than do the older technologies that they replace thus moving us towards an increasingly economical use of the world’s resources. Furthermore, many newer technologies are much less polluting than many older technologies.

In summary, economic growth driven by new technologies not only increases our incomes; it transforms our lives through the invention of new, hitherto undreamed of products that are made in new, hitherto undreamed of and more economical ways. We can indeed be thankful that no anti-growth advocate persuaded governments in 1950, let alone in 1900, to stop all growth on the grounds that resources were limited and that we did not need more of what we already had too much of, thereby denying us of all the products and processes just mentioned and the new resource saving and less polluting production methods ̶ and others too many to list here.

This thinking is logical on its face. But of course, the logical flaw is when it is not paired with the idea that the absolute physical footprint can’t grow forever. Put another way, you can’t just keep producing each unit of output more efficiently, and producing ever more output, unless the growth in efficiency is faster than the growth in output. It could theoretically be done, but we’re not close to turning that corner.