Well, first there is the common sense part - infinite growth with limited resources is likely to bump on a wall at some point. Someone (especially here) will probably argue that the resources are not really limited because technology and spaaaace, but that's precisely the kind of hubris I was reacting to in the first place.

I think the first extensive study on the subject is [the limits to growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth).

A compelling thing I've seen (sorry can't find the exact source, I think it was from [the shift project](https://theshiftproject.org)) is the very strong correlation - almost linear relation - between GDP, energy consumption and co2 emission. So far we haven't been able to decorrelate those three.