One person who was willing to risk political suicide was the visionary systems thinker Donella Meadows – one of the lead authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth report – and she didn’t mince her words. ‘Growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented by any culture,’ she declared in the late 1990s; ‘we’ve got to have an enough.’ In response to t

We have reached a stage where we often pursue growth for growth’s sake, a condition that in medical terminology would simply be called cancer.

“If we don’t grow,” they seem to feel, “we die.” But there is evidence to suggest that this model of the world isn’t true. After all, nothing can grow forever, and it may be counterproductive to try.

the notion of perpetual growth is just a social construct, initiated as a transition strategy to reboot the economy after World War II. It has now run its course.

“Our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life,”45 and sometimes the solution: we need a “Marshall Plan for the Earth.”