But this isn’t how ecology actually works. The problem with economic growth isn’t just that we might run out of resources at some point. The problem is that it progressively degrades the integrity of ecosystems. As onshore oil reserves run dry we can switch to offshore reserves, but both sources contribute to climate breakdown. We might be able to

What makes capitalism distinctive isn’t that it has markets, but that it is organised around perpetual growth; indeed, it is the first intrinsically expansionist economic system in history. It pulls ever-rising quantities of nature and human labour into circuits of commodity production. And because the goal of capital is to extract and accumulate s

there is a bitter irony to the fact that we have been persuaded to use the word ‘growth’ to describe what has now become primarily a process of breakdown.

The international system is already straining, with 65 million people displaced from their homes by wars and droughts – more than at any time since the Second World War. As migration pressures build, politics are becoming more polarised, fascist movements are on the march, and international alliances are beginning to fray. Factor in escalating disp

Mexico is home to the Peñasquito mine, one of the biggest silver mines in the world. Covering nearly 40 square miles, the operation is staggering in its scale: a sprawling open-cast complex ripped into the mountains, flanked by two waste dumps each a mile long, and a tailings dam full of toxic sludge held back by a wall that’s 7 miles around and as

Africa, colonisers faced what they openly called ‘the Labour Question’: how to get Africans to work in mines and on plantations for low wages. Africans generally preferred their subsistence lifestyles, and showed little inclination to do back-breaking work in European industries. The promise of wages was in most cases not enough to induce them into

We are all heirs of dualist ontology. We can see it everywhere in the language we use about nature today. We routinely describe the living world as ‘natural resources’, as ‘raw materials’, and even – as if to emphasise its subordination and servitude – as ‘ecosystem services’. We talk about waste and pollution and climate change as ‘externalities’,

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of material extraction. For neodymium – an essential element in wind turbines – extraction will need to rise by nearly 35% over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double. The same is true of silver, which is

The richest 10% of the world’s population are responsible for more than half of the world’s total carbon emissions since 1990.