Steady-State Economy?

I stumbled onto your site while following the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico on The Oil Drum, where I found your article on the Fake Fire Brigade. I have been worried about many of the issues you raise since the 1970s, as a scientist and engineer (B.S. Chemical Engineering, Ph.D. in theoretical physical chemistry, both from Rice University). I retired in 2000, after a career in the upstream oil and gas industry and nuclear waste disposal. If you are interested in more detail, please take a look at a website developed for my recent unsuccessful campaign for State University Regent in Nevada: http://www.dwaynechesnut.com. It has a detailed summary of my professional career. I have a good friend, an economist, with whom I've had a disagreement for more than 30 years on the sustainability of economic growth. His position is that human ingenuity has unlimited potential to find substitutes for any scarce resource. Mine is that energy is the ultimate constraint and that we will eventually reach the point of a negative return on energy investment. I remember some vigorous discussions on Limits to Growth when the book was first published. I am not well-versed in the literature of economics, but have been wondering if any effort has been devoted to developing even the concept of a steady-state economy. It seems to me that all the attention has been on two alternatives: growth or decay. I am very glad to see you at least raise the question, and look forward to reading more as your ideas develop.