Collision Course by Kerryn Higgs

Collision Course by Kerryn Higgs

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 I--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.

Higgs, Kerryn: - 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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262529693
ISBN 10	0262529696
Title	Collision Course
Author	Kerryn Higgs
Series	Collision Course
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2016-09-02
Number of pages	416
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable