Every economic transaction in the world takes a resource of some kind and uses energy to make something useful.  Some resources are directly renewable like food and timber and some are renewable through recycling methods which are energy intensive (steel and water, etc).

The economy isn't loosely correlated to energy the economy IS ENERGY.  Economic growth is only possible if you can have energy growth. World oil production hasn't increased since 2005.  So any real economic growth could have only come from technological improvements but those have a diminishing return.  Most economic growth today comes from governments running up huge deficits, pumping money into the system to give the appearance of growth.

But do we really need growth?  Is it healthy at all?  Growth is associated with rising standards of living but it is only "healthy" if the amount of energy/resources your economy consumes is less than the amount that is renewable by our surroundings.  Otherwise when those resources run out the standard of living must go down.  Unfortunately we are way past that point and our population or standard of living (or both) must go down eventually.  Solar/Wind sources just aren't growing fast enough to grow our economy AND replace current energy needs currently supplied by fossil fuels.

What would be healthy would be to grow up to the point of sustainable levels and then STOP GROWING.  What other organism on the planet can grow forever and be considered healthy?