Growth Growth Growth : Human History and the Planetary Catastrophe

Growth Growth Growth retells history as a succession of pivotal crises linked to economic growth. Beginning with agriculture ten thousand years ago, each crisis led to an impasse until human ingenuity devised a technical ‘solution’ to fix it. These solutions included the alphabet, paper, clocks, guns, the printing press, the steam engine, the petrol engine, electricity, nitrogen fertilizer, and the computer. Each solution, however, played a part in generating the next crisis.Growth-driven crises led to the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century, including the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler and Hiroshima. The brief ‘golden age’ of capitalism of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to the ultra-corporate capitalism that, in one variant or another, is now the global economic system.Julian Cobbing’s lively account exposes the historical roots of our converging problems – destruction of the environment, the massacre of other species, running down of oil reserves, global heating, and the nuclear threat to all of us. This time there is no technical solution, as we are devouring the Earth’s finite resources. Cobbing reminds us that we are just one species in a planetary life system which will dispense with us if we are not needed.