But if you cannot tell the difference between digging out and digging deeper, you are in trouble. It is a matter of very simple mathematics that you cannot sustain growth of either material possesions, or population. Whether we face this now, or a little into the future, makes no difference to the ultimate answer. If people say that growth must continue, they are saying that an impossible situation must continue. Albert A Bartlett, a physicist, who taught at Harvard, has been pointing out the simple mathematics of this for quite some time.
Technology is in fact the answer to how people live.
A flint knife is technology. To not get enough return on the calories you spend defines death. But to take more than can be sustained will also define death. No technology will allow indefinite growth on a finite planet. If people are psychologically unfit to deal with this fact now, they will be forced to deal with it later, and they will deal with it by dying.