Invention of Infinite Growth
How mainstream economics lost touch with reality
People in power tell us that growth is the surest path to a better life. This idea has shaped policy across the globe for over two hundred years, promising economic benefits to the many, without sacrifices. We have clung to this promise while witnessing the collapse of natural ecosystems necessary to sustain human life, quietly resisting any correlation between the two.
Meanwhile, scientists were busy confirming a direct link between our growing commercial footprint and ecological destruction. By divorcing the idea of growth from the realities faced by most people alive today, politicians have only exacerbated critical issues of the day: monopoly power, worker exploitation, resource wars and the rich–poor divide.
Tracing the long battle to put a price on our planet, Christopher Jones offers hope for the future. Humans have not always believed that economic growth should be infinite. We can still create new ideas about how to promote environmental sustainability, human welfare, and even responsible growth, with the wellbeing of the planet in mind.
Christopher Jones is a historian of energy, economics, and the environment based at Arizona State University. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Environment and was a Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow in Natural Resources and Political Economy at the University of California-Berkeley, and is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014).