In an era of escalating climate chaos and biodiversity collapse, our dominant ideologies, neoliberalism, capitalism, Marxism, socialism, cornucopianism, techno-optimism, and even the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are complicit in humanity’s march toward self-destruction. United by an unyielding obsession with economic growth, these frameworks prioritise expansion over planetary health, fuelling resource depletion, inequality, and environmental ruin. This editorial delves into the historical and psychological roots of this growth fetish, dissects how each ideology perpetuates it, and draws on thinkers, like Jason Hickel and Naomi Klein, to argue for a radical shift. Only by abandoning endless growth can we forge a sustainable path, averting the collapse forewarned by scholars in degrowth and ecological economics.
For decades, the mantra of economic growth has dominated global discourse, embedded in ideologies from neoliberalism’s free-market zeal to Marxism’s vision of proletarian abundance. Capitalism, its broader umbrella, measures success by GDP surges, often at the expense of ecosystems, while socialism seeks similar expansion through state control. Cornucopianism clings to the myth of infinite resources through human ingenuity, and techno-optimism bets on innovation to outpace crises. Even the SDGs, hailed as a blueprint for a better world, embed “sustainable growth” in their core, revealing a contradiction that thinkers like Jason Hickel in Less is More decry as impossible on a finite planet. This growth imperative traces back to the Industrial Revolution, where fossil fuels unlocked unprecedented production, but at the cost of soaring CO2 levels, now over 420 ppm, and a 69 percent drop in wildlife populations since 1970, as highlighted by global conservation reports.
Yet, this obsession is not mere policy; it is psychological and historical. Evolutionary biases favour short-term gains, as Naomi Klein explores in This Changes Everything, where capitalism’s extractive logic clashes with climate reality. Historical collapses, detailed in Jared Diamond’s Collapse, show societies like the Maya or Easter Islanders overreaching their resources, mirroring today’s trajectory. In Downfall: Lessons for Our Final Century, Dr Ilhan Niaz underscores how civilisations that cling to unsustainable orthodoxies eventually undermine their own survival, a warning strikingly relevant to today’s fixation on growth. The SDGs, while ambitious, face criticism for prioritising economic targets over ecological ones, leading to biodiversity loss amid growth pursuits. Degrowth thinkers like Giorgos Kallis advocate living well with less, challenging cornucopian dreams that technology alone, whether AI, renewables, or geoengineering, can save us without curbing consumption. As pandemics, floods, and heatwaves intensify, understanding this ideological trap is not optional but crucial for survival.
Neoliberalism and Capitalism’s Extractive Frenzy
Neoliberalism, with its deregulation and market worship, has turbocharged capitalism’s growth engine, leading to rampant environmental degradation. David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism exposes how policies since the 1980s, privatisation, deregulation, and globalisation, have prioritised corporate profits, resulting in deforestation, ocean acidification, and carbon lock-in. Fossil fuel subsidies, estimated in trillions, exemplify this by propping up growth while emissions climb. Biodiversity hotspots vanish under agribusiness expansion, while Naomi Klein critiques how “shock doctrine” tactics exploit crises for deeper extraction. This ideology assumes markets self-correct, but as Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics illustrates, growth overshoots planetary boundaries, risking irreversible tipping points like Amazon dieback or polar ice collapse. Neoliberal capitalism has delivered wealth for some, but its ecological footprint reveals a systemic drive towards destruction masked as prosperity.
Marxism and Socialism’s Growth-Dependent Equality
Marxism and socialism, while exposing capitalism’s inequalities, remain tethered to industrial growth as the path to redistribution. Karl Marx envisioned a workers’ paradise through maximised production, but modern applications, such as Soviet heavy industry, ravaged environments, leaving behind ecological disasters from Chernobyl to the desiccated Aral Sea. Contemporary socialists often advocate green jobs and renewable expansion, yet as Hickel notes, scaling up under growth metrics still demands unsustainable resource throughput. China’s model of state socialism, blending Marxism with markets, now emits more CO2 than any nation, underscoring the growth dependency at its core. Degrowth proponents like Federico Demaria argue that true equity requires shrinking material and energy use, not endlessly expanding it. Equality achieved through expansion still accelerates ecological collapse; the only sustainable equity is one built within planetary boundaries.
The SDGs’ Contradictory Promise of Sustainable Growth
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals project a vision of harmony: prosperity, equality, and environmental stewardship achieved together. Yet the framework is riddled with contradiction. Goal 8’s call for “sustained economic growth” undercuts climate and biodiversity goals, creating a paradox. Critics argue that pursuing rapid growth in developing nations would obliterate the carbon budget and intensify ecological breakdown. Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows demonstrated decades ago that growth and resource use are inseparable at scale, and updates confirm humanity’s trajectory in overshoot. The SDGs, while noble, often recycle the language of growth obsession, making sustainability conditional upon expansion rather than sufficiency. Reports consistently show biodiversity targets failing amid agricultural intensification and industrialisation designed to boost GDP. In this sense, the SDGs reflect a deeper cultural reluctance to confront limits, offering a palatable narrative that postpones the difficult choices demanded by ecological reality.
Cornucopianism and Techno-Optimism’s Dangerous Delusions
Cornucopianism insists that human ingenuity guarantees endless abundance, a view turbocharged by techno-optimism’s faith in artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and even space mining. Yet history and science repeatedly puncture this dream. Julian Simon’s cornucopian wagers on falling resource prices ignored ecological externalities like climate feedback loops. Renewables, while essential, depend on rare earth minerals whose extraction devastates ecosystems. As Matthias Schmelzer and colleagues argue in The Future is Degrowth, technology embedded within growth logic perpetuates resource hunger rather than resolving it. The rebound effect, captured in Jevons’ Paradox, shows that efficiency gains often accelerate consumption. Meanwhile, species extinctions outpace technological fixes, echoing E.O. Wilson’s warnings about the erosion of biodiversity as humanity’s greatest ecological crisis. Innovation may ease pressures, but when deployed to sustain endless consumption, it becomes a delusion as dangerous as denial itself.
Psychological and Historical Reinforcements of Growth Mania
Growth’s hold on human imagination is strengthened not only by ideology but by psychology and history. Behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow illustrates how human cognition favours short-term gratification, a bias that ideologies exploit to justify perpetual expansion. Jared Diamond’s Collapse chronicles past civilisations undone by overreach, Norse Greenlanders clinging to unsustainable practices, or the Easter Islanders deforesting themselves into collapse, providing stark lessons ignored today. Meanwhile, Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows how growth-driven inequality creates resistance to reform, with the top emitters blocking systemic change. Optimism bias and denial mechanisms allow societies to dismiss ecological limits as alarmist, even as record-breaking heat and floods prove otherwise. This convergence of psychology and ideology entrenches growth mania, making it harder to imagine alternatives like degrowth or steady-state economics. Yet history warns that failure to break free from this cycle leads not to resilience but to ruin.
While these critiques paint a grim picture, they may risk overstating the rigidity of ideologies. Variants such as eco-socialism, green Keynesianism, and proposals for regulated capitalism show that some frameworks attempt adaptation to planetary limits. Degrowth offers inspiring visions of sufficiency, but lacks a comprehensive blueprint for a global transition, and cultural resistance to abandoning growth remains formidable. Optimists point to renewable energy surges and efficiency gains, but systemic flaws, particularly the failure of absolute decoupling, dominate the evidence. A more nuanced path may involve blending insights: markets for efficiency, Marxism’s equity, and SDGs’ inclusivity, recalibrated within ecological limits. Still, urgency dictates that instrumentalism will not suffice. Without bold rejection of unchecked expansion, even hybrid models will falter against accelerating planetary crises.
The pursuit of endless growth has become humanity’s most dangerous illusion. It blinds societies to ecological limits, entrenches inequities, and erodes the very foundations upon which civilisation rests. Every ideology that sanctifies expansion, whether under the banner of markets, revolutions, or development, ultimately deepens the crisis. What is needed is not another promise of abundance, but the courage to accept restraint, balance, and responsibility. The choice before us is stark: continue racing after the mirage of infinite progress, or pause to build a world that values survival over spectacle. The century ahead will not forgive hesitation. To endure, we must abandon the myth of boundless growth and embrace the discipline of living within our means.
