Economic Growth

I think at some point economic growth is limited by the consumption driven markets we've developed. We can keep coming up with gadgets to buy but I don't know that the economy can grow deep long term.

Imagine how much more value is generated for free by having survival less secure. Two instances of this: 1) Were the climate change damage to materialize more rapidly the danger of not surviving puts a greater value on whatever it takes to reduce climate change and all the incidental problems. 2) Aliens attack, and we can fight back reasonably. The value created by reducing survival security increases the potential for growth.

I wonder if this makes sense. Can we increase the amount of value in the economy by making survival less guaranteed? Needs and wants are taken to be unlimited in every analysis, especially the personal analysis of the human heart - Buddhism is obviously onto something. If N/Ws are unlimited then we cannot actually create more value by creating more wants, it can only come from creating new widgets/ideas. Does anyone know of the dialogue on this?