The Meaning of Growth Anti-Environmentalist Rhetoric and the Defence of Modernity

Foreword.  Acknowledgements. Prologue: 1972—The high-water mark of modernity.  Introduction: the question mark.  1. An irrational denial of limits?  2. Interpreting the denial of limits: the secular theodicy of modernity  3. Growthism vs limitism: a new analysis of environmental discourse  4. Freedom: the good life according to growthism  5. Power: the economy in mind  6. Immortality: growth against death.  Conclusion: limits and transcendence. Index

Biography

Richard McNeill Douglas is a research fellow of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey and fellow of the Westminster Abbey Institute. Previously, Douglas has worked at the UK Parliament, for the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth. His writing on the environment and political economy has appeared in three books and a range of publications, including Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Politics, International Journal of Green Economics, Social Epistemology, Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, Political Quarterly, Prospect, Monthly Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, The Mint Magazine, Left Foot Forward, and Church Times.

"A fascinating account of anti-environmental rhetoric and discourse, and of the ideology of technology at the heart of Silicon Valley. Putting it into the history of struggles over theology and science, Douglas shows that what seems the most materialist of outlooks rests on a fantastical ‘metaphysics’ of the market economy."

Professor Alan Finlayson, University of East Anglia, UK

"Douglas offers a profound set of meditations on our collective failure to think ourselves out of ‘growthism’. By positioning our ecological crisis on the canvas of modernity itself, The Meaning of Growth will be of interest to sociologists and moral philosophers, as much as to environmentalists and political economists."

Professor Will Davies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

"This rich analysis dissects the discourse of growthism and illuminates the reasons behind the failure of the limits thesis to gain political traction. Through a multi-layered interpretive approach, Douglas unpacks the ontological and emotional dimensions of growthism and proposes a return to metaphysical questions as the starting point for effective political action."

Dr Sophia Hatzisavvidou, University of Bath, UK

"Advocates of environmental politics are often accused of unwittingly worshipping a religion of pantheism and ‘Mother Nature,’ but Douglas deftly turns the tables, showing how resistance to ecological sustainability relies on a repressed and ultimately perverse theological impulse."

Professor Jason Blakely, author of Lost in Ideology and We Built Reality

"Ever get the feeling that the efforts you and so many other individuals and organisations are undertaking to shift economic priorities are not making a dent? This book explains why. It pulls open the deep-seated and tightly held assumptions underpinning the growth agenda. Douglas crisply presents a critical layer in the growth-dependence puzzle that all of us, not just those in the post-growth movement, will need to grapple with. And the sooner the better."

Dr Katherine Trebeck, University of Edinburgh, UK

"Douglas astutely critiques the cultural faith in endless growth as a fundamentally flawed secularized religion. What is needed instead, he argues, is a shift toward accepting ‘the finitude of the finite’. With such a new philosophical, if not theological, view, we collectively may be better equipped to strengthen and activate political will to address the major socio-environmental crises of our time."

Professor Aaron M. McCright, Michigan State University, USA

"Douglas shows how, beneath the reasoning, the rhetoric, and the rancour lie fundamentally theological questions, transposed into the idiom of modernity. Freedom, power, death, eternity, and our cosmic destiny: this is what we are talking about when we are talking about ‘growth’."

Nick Spencer, author of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion