Something from Nothing to think about

Was listening to public radio last night (good distraction from the active act of driving a car) where David Suzuki (Canadian environmentalist) spoke about the paradox of constant growth. Today people from all countries are conditioned to think about growth as the only imperative, progress in all manners of systems whether economic, monetary, agriculture et al. The reality though is that there is a limited resource called Earth and by simply making a better mouse trap we are not going to find new mice to trap. There are only 99 mice left (metaphorically paraphrasing). He uses a test tube full of bacteria that exponentially multiply to elaborate his point. That when supply is constant and demand exceeds a tipping point we are screwed. He indicated that we are already in the last inning but we kid ourselves (through our acquired arrogance) that we can outdo this cycle. Truly the only outcome I personally see is for places like India to retard and eventually cull their enormous populations while for the so called developed world to figure out a brand new concept called 'Conspicuous Abstinence'. That would simply mean not buying an iphone or new car every 2 years as an example. Can we do that?