It is not self-evident to me that QoL improvements are necessarily driven by increased energy consumption. Not having read J. Storrs Hall, I do not have any specific rebuttals to that.
When I have heard such assertions before, I dug a little and found it was based on extrapolation. Sorry, if that isn't implicit in yours or J. Storrs Hall's thinking.
Ultimately, any system that seems to grow exponentially will eventually be found to have been on an S-Curve. We can argue the timing of reaching the plateau after the fact, but it is certain that no system can continue to grow exponentially indefinitely. Nor should it have to.
Global human population for instance should start to reverse centuries of growth this century. In the case of population flattening, perhaps we can agree this is to the good. I would argue much the same about energy consumption.
