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Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet (MIT Press) Hardcover – August 8, 2014

by Kerryn Higgs (Author)

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The notion of ever-expanding economic growth has been promoted so relentlessly that "growth" is now entrenched as the natural objective of collective human effort. The public has been convinced that growth is the natural solution to virtually all social problems -- poverty, debt, unemployment, and even the environmental degradation caused by the determined pursuit of growth. Meanwhile, warnings by scientists that we live on a finite planet that cannot sustain infinite economic expansion are ignored or even scorned. In Collision Course, Kerryn Higgs examines how society's commitment to growth has marginalized scientific findings on the limits of growth, casting them as bogus predictions of imminent doom.

Higgs tells how in 1972, The Limits to Growth -- written by MIT researchers Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens III -- found that unimpeded economic growth was likely to collide with the realities of a finite planet within a century. Although the book's arguments received positive responses initially, before long the dominant narrative of growth as panacea took over. Higgs explores the resistance to ideas about limits, tracing the propagandizing of "free enterprise," the elevation of growth as the central objective of policy makers, the celebration of "the magic of the market," and the ever-widening influence of corporate-funded think tanks -- a parallel academic universe dedicated to the dissemination of neoliberal principles and to the denial of health and environmental dangers from the effects of tobacco to global warming. More than forty years after The Limits to Growth, the idea that growth is essential continues to hold sway, despite the mounting evidence of its costs -- climate destabilization, pollution, intensification of gross global inequalities, and depletion of the resources on which the modern economic edifice depends.

Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet (MIT Press)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

If modern society ever had a core taboo it is against speaking favorably of limits, especially with respect to growth. To accept limits, to question growth is to upset a myth that has sustained the industrial world for a century and more. But that 'sustaining' has been through fossil fuels and problem displacement, not living within ecological means. That time is over, and so should be the taboo. Higgs thus performs a valuable service with her thorough and carefully crafted history of the ideas of limits and growth. It is well worth reading even for those who feel they know the arguments.

(Thomas Princen, author of The Logic of Sufficiency and Treading Softly)

Important, wonderful, and shocking. The conspiracy theory that we all thought too fanciful to be true was not so crazy after all, and here is the evidence to prove it. Higgs explains brilliantly how our ideas about economics and the environment have been carefully warped and manipulated over decades, just so a small minority could get rich. This book is essential reading.

(Graeme Maxton, Member of the Club of Rome and best-selling author)

In Collision Course, Kerryn Higgs skillfully traces the history of the limits to growth controversy, focusing on the question of resource adequacy to sustain future growth in human consumption. This is an important book with a highly unique perspective that cuts across conventional disciplines and history.

(Dennis Pirages, Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Collision Course is a well-documented, insightful, and sweeping assessment of economic growth: its inescapable past, perilous present, and impossible future.

(Brian Czech, founder and President of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE))

This clear and cogent book is an important wake-up call. It should not need saying that it is impossible for human populations and economies to grow without limit on a finite planet, but that delusion is widespread. This book is a reminder of the inconvenient truth that should be informing our leaders, as well as an excellent analysis of the way public understanding of our global predicament has been systematically subverted for decades by powerful vested interests.

(Australian Book Review)

This is an excellent book, full of historical depth and analytical insights.

(Jonathon Porritt Resurgence & Ecologist)

Higgs' gentle, thoroughly researched, insightful book could easily become a foundation text in history, philosophy, economics, politics and, of course, in the biological sciences. All university and public libraries and indeed the members of all political and social institutions who wish to be taken seriously in debates about our future should read and discuss this work if we are to avoid the collision for which Higgs suggests we are on course.

(The Economic and Labour Relations Review)

About the Author

Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer. She received her PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Tasmania.

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Product Details

Series: MIT Press
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press (August 8, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262027739
ISBN-13: 978-0262027731
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #591,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #509 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Environmental Policy
- #1030 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Civil & Environmental > Environmental
- #1212 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Environmental Economics

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Top Customer Reviews

Neoliberals and growth

By A. J. Sutter on October 21, 2014

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

The author of this well-researched book (KH) says that her objective is "to illuminate the reasons for the ideological dominance of growth, and to foster an awareness of the actual realities -- human and ecological -- that contradict its confident discourse" (@282). This book pretty much achieves that goal, albeit not necessarily as exhaustively as a couple of those definite articles might suggest. KH's historical scope is centuries, with the period from the 1970s to today getting the most attention. Her focus is primarily on environmental arguments against growth, though she also describes how "development" policies in the global South have been a dismal failure, too. She drills in deepest on corporate activities to propagandize in favor of growth and against allegations that it's harmful to the environment, including by means of "balanced"-seeming think tanks.

KH provides a very nice way of distinguishing the 1972 ecological blockbuster "Limits to Growth" (L2G) from the Malthusian label with which it's often smeared. Quite unlike L2G's authors, Malthus believed the poor ought to starve. [PS: After reading Robert Mayhew's recent nuanced book about Malthus (Harvard UP 2014), this seems a bit of overstatement, albeit one propounded also by many of Malthus's contemporaries and near-contemporaries.] KH also shows that Garrett Hardin, author of the widely anthologized 1968 article "The Tragedy of the Commons" -- which purports to show that private property is a better way to conserve resources than sharing them in common -- shared this Malthusian callousness. (The subtitle of one of his 1974 articles about "lifeboat ethics" was "The case against helping the poor.") Yet ironically it's the truly Malthusian Hardin who's beloved by the same neoliberals who wrongly dismiss L2G as Malthusian.Read more ›

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the ecology and the propaganda of emerging transnational corporations in fine detail. The book is easily readable for such ...

By Paul Reader on December 12, 2014

Format: Hardcover

If there is one more object you should purchase before putting the brake on consumption this is it. Higgs explores, the economics, the ecology and the propaganda of emerging transnational corporations in fine detail. The book is easily readable for such weighty subjects. It is packed with facts, accounting and statistics that unravels nearly two centuries of deception under capitalism leading ultimately to the phenomenon of climate change denial and global environmental injustice. If your garage is full of stuff and you don't seem to be able to stop consuming; if cash is pouring into your bank account and you don't seem to be able to stop it, or if you haven't got a brass razoo and all you can do is read the free reviews, this book will educate you enough to confidently start advocating for good political decision-making and ecological economic change.

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Money or Life? - essential reading

By Graeme Goldsworthy on March 22, 2015

Format: Hardcover

Have you ever thought that the idea of endless economic growth, while living on a finite planet, just did not add up? Have you wondered why politicians do not seem to understand this? Collision Course explains how and why the idea of "growth" has come to appear to be the only solution to many problems facing the planet - environmental degradation, poverty, financial excess (GFC), or how to leave resources for future generations, - problems made worse by growth itself.

While many books address specific environmental or economic issues, this book sets out to explain how the current global economic system has developed and why it is addicted to the idea of "growth", despite the mounting evidence that the planet (our life support system!) is being rapidly degraded. The idea of economic growth has appeared to be very successful in the past - while there were new lands to settle and new resources to exploit (if we ignore the impacts on indigenous cultures) - but these conditions no longer apply, and growth may now actually be a danger to all life. Perhaps one of the saddest developments is that science itself, which has brought so much benefit, is being criticized or ignored because it questions the wisdom of endless growth.

Collision Course is clearly written, and directed to a general readership, but has extensive notes and references for anyone wanting more detail. If you want to begin to understand the "how and why" behind many of our current problems, look no further. Highly recommended.

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Necessary!

By Kyle Gardner on May 26, 2015

Format: Hardcover

An excellent read, but in fact the collision is already underway. The real issues now are how bad will it get, and what, if anything, humanity will do to minimize the fiasco. The prospects are not good and there seem few hopeful efforts underway. Higgs should be complimented for her excellent work here.

Kyle Gardner, author, Momentary Threshold

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Whatever your question was, the answer is always the market...

Comprehensively demonstrates that an ever-bigger economic pie only serves the feed the rich and will do little to alleviate world poverty. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Stephen Saunders

a great book. Anyone interested in the environment should read ...

a great book. Anyone interested in the environment should read it. A great antidote to the PR of corporate America which has been brain washing the American people for a century.

Published 16 months ago by Linda T

Five Stars

Thank YOu.

Published 21 months ago by Chicago Joe

Economic growth usually bad for the world

I thought I was the only one that was suspicious of the constant claim that the economy needs to increase in value for us to have a happy life. Read more

Published on December 1, 2014 by Michael W. Konrad

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