Core Idea
Walk into any university economics department and question the primacy of GDP growth. I dare you.
Watch faces stiffen. The temerity to suggest that endless expansion might be impossible on a finite planet will get you thrown out.
But you might also hear nervous laughter.
The entire edifice of modern economic thought, from Adam Smith’s invisible hand to Keynes’ demand management to Marx’s revolutionary dialectic, all rest on one unquestioned assumption that growth is good, necessary, and ultimately limitless.
Politicians promise it. Businesses depend on it. Pension funds require it. The whole debt-fueled machinery of modern civilisation assumes tomorrow’s economy will be larger than today’s, forever.
But what if this foundational belief is simply wrong?
What if growth isn’t a choice we make, but a biological imperative we’ve temporarily satisfied through a fossil fuel subsidy?
And what if that subsidy is ending?
Counterpoint
The growth paradigm isn’t economics. It’s the human expression of density-dependent population expansion playing out with fossil fuel assistance.
Every organism increases its numbers when resources are abundant, until resources become limiting again. Humans are no different. We’ve simply been extraordinarily clever at converting buried sunlight into food, extending our carrying capacity from perhaps 1 billion sustainable souls to 8 billion temporarily well-fed ones.
The comforting story is that human ingenuity transcends natural limits. Technology will save us. AI will solve scarcity. We’ll mine asteroids, build vertical farms, and achieve fusion power.
The economists wave their hands and speak of “decoupling” for growing the economy while using fewer resources.
The socialists promise that redistribution will solve scarcity.
The capitalists insist that innovation will create infinite abundance.
All nonsense.
The mathematics are brutal. Even if every person on Earth consumed at the rate that Chad’s citizens do (the lowest energy users globally), we’d still need half of our current resource throughput just to maintain 8 billion people at subsistence.
But Chad aspires to live like China, China aspires to live like California, and California isn’t planning to live like Chad.
Here’s the thing.
The growth paradigm is a Ponzi scheme running on planetary capital. We’re not growing wealth; we’re liquidating natural systems and calling it prosperity.
When the soil is mined out, the aquifers are drained, and the stable climate is disrupted, the scheme collapses.
Thought Challenge
Track your resource footprint for one week… not just energy and waste, but everything from the water embedded in your food, the land required for your consumption, the materials extracted for your lifestyle. Calculate honestly. How many planets would we need if everyone lived like you?
Study one company you admire and trace its growth assumptions… Look at their business plan, their debt structure, their promises to shareholders. What growth rates do they assume? What happens to their debt obligations if they can’t expand? Now ask yourself, where do they imagine the additional customers, materials, and energy will come from in a finite system?
Closing Reflection
Degrowth isn’t an ideology or a lifestyle choice. It’s physics arriving to collect on our ecological debt.
The only question is whether we’ll choose managed degrowth as a conscious reduction in material throughput while maintaining wellbeing, or have catastrophic degrowth imposed on us by natural limits.
The sooner we abandon the growth fantasy and start designing for sufficiency rather than excess, the gentler our inevitable landing will be.
Evidence Support
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461(7263), 472–475.
TL;DR… the concept of “planetary boundaries” show that Earth’s systems can only support human well-being and development within strict biophysical limits. Their findings reveal that at least three boundaries—climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen cycle disruption—have already been crossed due to human activities.
Relevance to insight… how rapid human population growth, technological innovation, and intensive food production have pushed global systems beyond sustainable limits. It directly supports the insight by providing a scientific framework that connects population dynamics with ecological overshoot and resource depletion.
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., et al. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223), 1259855.
TL;DR… refines and expands the planetary boundaries framework, offering updated scientific evidence and thresholds for nine critical Earth-system processes. The research demonstrates accelerated transgression of safe boundaries driven by population pressure, resource consumption, and fossil-fueled development.
Relevance to insight… robust scientific evidence—based on global data and modelling—for how human development, including raising agricultural productivity and meeting food demand, can undermine long-term sustainability. It establishes why technological “escapes” from ecological limits are temporary and potentially self-defeating.
Foley, J. A., et al. (2011). Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature, 478(7369), 337–342.
TL;DR… knowledge on agricultural expansion, intensification, and the massive environmental costs associated with modern food production. Their main finding is that current methods, though successful at feeding billions, are degrading ecosystems and are not sustainable on a planetary scale.
Relevance to insight… how food production—enabled by technology, fertility enhancement, and resource inputs—has supported unprecedented population growth but remains fundamentally unsustainable amid ecosystem degradation and finite planetary resources.
Diamond, J. (2005). “Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed.” Penguin Publishing Group.
TL;DR… synthesis of historical and archaeological evidence demonstrates that societies reach their peak population, technological advancement, and resource consumption shortly before experiencing collapse, triggered by ecological overshoot. He highlights that collapse is often preceded by a temporary escape from resource limits, enabled by ingenuity, energy inputs, and organisational complexity.
Relevance to insight… a rigorous review of case studies and a comparative analysis of resource crises spanning civilisations. It provides empirical evidence that temporary “escapes” from limits are a recurring pattern, making it clear that current global trends mirror prior historical trajectories.
Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J., & Befort, B. L. (2011). Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20260–20264.
TL;DR… forecast future global food demand and show that further intensification, land clearing, and resource use—in response to population growth—will greatly increase environmental damage unless radical changes in food systems are made. They argue that technological solutions alone are insufficient without deep restructuring toward sustainability.
Relevance to insight… empirical and predictive evidence that humanity risks breaching critical limits despite technological advances in agriculture and food supply. It confirms that demographic and economic forces continue to drive unsustainable consumption, echoing the Malthusian trap at contemporary scales.