Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet - Softcover

Higgs, Kerryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262529696 ISBN 13: 9780262529693

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2016

Synopsis

The story behind the reckless promotion of economic growth despite its disastrous consequences for life on the planet.

The notion of ever-expanding economic growth has been promoted so relentlessly that “growth” is now entrenched as the natural objective of collective human effort. The public has been convinced that growth is the natural solution to virtually all social problems―poverty, debt, unemployment, and even the environmental degradation caused by the determined pursuit of growth. Meanwhile, warnings by scientists that we live on a finite planet that cannot sustain infinite economic expansion are ignored or even scorned. In Collision Course, Kerryn Higgs examines how society's commitment to growth has marginalized scientific findings on the limits of growth, casting them as bogus predictions of imminent doom.

Higgs tells how in 1972, The Limits to Growth―written by MIT researchers Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens III―found that unimpeded economic growth was likely to collide with the realities of a finite planet within a century. Although the book's arguments received positive responses initially, before long the dominant narrative of growth as panacea took over. Higgs explores the resistance to ideas about limits, tracing the propagandizing of “free enterprise,” the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy makers, the celebration of “the magic of the market,” and the ever-widening influence of corporate-funded think tanks―a parallel academic universe dedicated to the dissemination of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers from the effects of tobacco to global warming. More than forty years after The Limits to Growth, the idea that growth is essential continues to hold sway, despite the mounting evidence of its costs―climate destabilization, pollution, intensification of gross global inequalities, and depletion of the resources on which the modern economic edifice depends.

About this title

About the Author

Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer. She received her PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Tasmania, where she is now a University Associate. She is a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome.

Review

This clear and cogent book is an important wake-up call. It should not need saying that it is impossible for human populations and economies to grow without limit on a finite planet, but that delusion is widespread. This book is a reminder of the inconvenient truth that should be informing our leaders, as well as an excellent analysis of the way public understanding of our global predicament has been systematically subverted for decades by powerful vested interests.

―Australian Book Review

This is an excellent book, full of historical depth and analytical insights.

―Jonathon Porritt, Resurgence & Ecologist

Higgs' gentle, thoroughly researched, insightful book could easily become a foundation text in history, philosophy, economics, politics and, of course, in the biological sciences. All university and public libraries and indeed the members of all political and social institutions who wish to be taken seriously in debates about our future should read and discuss this work if we are to avoid the collision for which Higgs suggests we are on course.

―The Economic and Labour Relations Review

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0262529696
• ISBN 13: 9780262529693
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 410