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| Prosperity without Growth |
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Economics for a Finite Planet
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Tim Jackson
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$23.95 Hardcover
Release Date: 10/23/2009
ISBN: 9781844078943
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| 280 Pages |
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Distributed for Earthscan
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About the Book
Winner, 2010 Best of Green Award (Business and Politics), TreeHugger.com
Is it time to re-think economic growth?
'The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so.'
President Nicolas Sarkozy, Paris, September 2009
Is more economic growth the solution? Will it deliver prosperity and well-being for a global population projected to reach nine billion?
In this explosive book, Tim Jackson - a top sustainability adviser to the UK government - makes a compelling case against continued economic growth in developed nations.
No one denies that development is essential for poorer nations. But in the advanced economies there is mounting evidence that ever-increasing consumption adds little to human happiness and may even impede it. More urgently, it is now clear that the ecosystems that sustain our economies are collapsing under the impacts of rising consumption. Unless we can radically lower the environmental impact of economic activity - and there is no evidence to suggest that we can - we will have to devise a path to prosperity that does not rely on continued growth.
Economic heresy? Or an opportunity to improve the sources of well-being, creativity and lasting prosperity that lie outside the realm of the market?
Tim Jackson provides a credible vision of how human society can flourish - within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Fulfilling this vision is simply the most urgent task of our times.
The growth debate
The book is a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson's controversial study for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. Since the report was published in March 2009, President Sarkozy has asked world leaders to join a revolution in the measurement of economic progress, Sir Nicholas Stern has warned 'at some point we would have to think about whether we want future growth', and John Prescott has called the current economic growth model 'immoral'. Read some more news articles on the growth debate here>>
About the Author(s)
Tim Jackson introduces his controversial and groundbreaking book, which examines the economic structure and social logic of consumerism, and proposes that we can have increased and widespread prosperity without economic growth.
Read his article From Balaton to Buckingham Palace: excursions into the dilemma of growth exclusively on the Earthscan Blog, and catch up with what the media have been saying about growth in the blog post The ‘Prosperity Without Growth’ debate -- latest news articles.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Forewords by Herman E, Daly, Bill McKibben, Mary Robinson and Pavan Sukhdev
1 Prosperity Lost
2 The Age of Irresponsibility
3 Redefining Prosperity
4 The Dilemma of Growth
5 The Myth of Decoupling
6 The 'Iron Cage' of Consumerism
7 Keynesianism and the 'Green New Deal'
8 Ecological Macro-Ecomonics
9 Flourishing -- Within Limits
10 Governance for Prosperity
11 The Transition to a Sustainable Economy
12 The Lasting Prosperity
Appendices
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Notes
References
Reviews
"One of the best books of 2009"
-- Financial Times
"This might well become as important for sustainable development as the Brundtland Report."
--Paul-Marie Boulanger, Director of IDD
"Prosperity without Growth's hugely encouraging and thrilling theme is that humanity can prosper without growth. In fact there is no other way left to us. "
--Dr Robert Goodland, former Adviser to the World Bank Group, winner of World Conservation Union's Coolidge Medal of Honor, 2008
"Tim Jackson's book simply resets the agenda for Western society."
--Bernie Bulkin, SDC commissioner for Climate Change, Energy and Transport, former Chief Scientist of BP
"A must-read for anyone concerned with issues of climate change and sustainability - bold, original and comprehensive. We have to define prosperity and welfare differently from the past and separate them from economic growth measured as GDP: this work shows how we should set about the task."
--Anthony Giddens, Emeritus Professor, LSE
"Jackson's cutting edge research has already begun to re-define the debate about how to achieve a future of human and planetary well-being. A must-read."
--Juliet Schor, author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, and Professor of Sociology, Boston College
"Jackson goes after the complacency and dishonesty at the heart of contemporary politics, and provides a brilliant and compelling account of the crucial importance of the growth debate."
--Jonathon Porritt, former chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission
"The best account of the financial crises and the state of society I have read in a long time. . . The beauty is that the change that is needed will make us happier."
--Clare Short, MP
"Zero growth is not only necessary, it is inevitable and will supercede Selfish Capitalism. In this brilliant analysis, Tim Jackson has laid bare a system in crisis and has lit the way forward."
--Oliver James, Author of Affluenza
"Tim Jackson provides a convincing case as to why conventional economic growth has not and cannot deliver prosperity. By showing why this is the case, we have the tools to start to build an economy based on sustainable development."
--Jan Bebbington, Professor of Accounting and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews
"A vital, much-needed, and timely work that deserves to be widely read, this is more than a brilliant treatise on the difficulties of developing a truly sustainable economy. It is also an important contribution to the increasingly urgent debate over the nature of the good life and the good society."
--Professor Colin Campbell, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of York
"Economic growth is both unsustainable on a finite planet and undesirable in its failure to continue to improve real welfare. What we need is true prosperity without growth. Why we must have this and how it can be achieved are compellingly explained in this essential work. It is not sacrifice to adopt the measures advocated. It is a sacrifice of our current and future well-being not to."
--Dr. Robert Costanza, Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont
"Provokes official thought on the unthinkable. No small accomplishment! I hope this gets the serious attention it deserves."
--Professor Herman Daly, author of Steady-State Economics and recipient of the Honorary Right Livelihood Award (Sweden's alternative to the Nobel Prize)
"What makes it unthinkable to stop growth even though it is killing us? Tim Jackson boldly confronts the structural Catch-22 that drives this madness and proposes in this lucid, persuasive, and blessedly readable book how we might begin to get off the fast track to self-destruction. Don't miss it!"
-Dianne Dumanoski, author of The End of the Long Summer and co-author of Our Stolen Future
"Tim Jackson cuts through the official cant and wishful thinking to tell us what we have refused to admit -- we cannot preserve a habitable planet and pursue endless economic growth at the same time. In an era when all ideologies have failed, this book lays out the basis for the only viable political philosophy for the 21st century."
--Clive Hamilton, Author of Growth Fetish and Professor of Public Ethics, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australia (Forthcoming Earthscan title: Requiem for a Species)
"If you want to understand why current growth centric economics is not fit for purpose then read this book. This is the clearest and most important contribution to proving it's time to rethink growth economics in order to live the low carbon, poverty free and one planet life we all need and want."
--Alan Knight, Founder of Singleplanetliving
"Endless growth on a finite planet, or endless misery-spreading recession, both represent impossible futures. Here are some very powerful steps towards a possible, indeed a very hopeful, alternate outcome!"
--Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy
"We were delighted when Professor Jackson spoke at our July Meeting at Lloyds Banking HQ in London. He endorsed the feelings of many in the BCSD-UK that business as usual is not an option. His clear and concise challenge of what is considered convention is timely and highly appropriate."
--David Middleton, CEO, Business Council for Sustainable Development UK
"Prosperity without Growth says it all: informatively, clearly, inspiringly, critically and constructively, starting from the very troubled, unsustainable and unsatisfying economy we have today and providing a robust combination of suggestions for going toward a sustainable economy and fulfilling lives."
--Richard Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley
"Rising consumption may not be sustainable, due to climate change, energy shortfalls, and to social and psychological harms. In this compelling argument, Tim Jackson shows how urgent it is to think of what might replace it, and what to aim for."
--Avner Offer, Professor of Economic History at Oxford, author of Challenge of Affluence
"Stimulating and timely. This is the best attempt I've seen to build a trans-disciplinary critique of economic growth, with prescriptions based in economic theory."
--Ronan Palmer, Chief Economist, The Environment Agency
"Tim Jackson's book is a powerful intellectual challenge to an economic orthodoxy out of touch with the real world of physical limits, global warming and peaking oil reserves. It is refreshingly rigorous, honest and hopeful."
--Ann Pettifor, Fellow of the new economics foundation and co-author of The Green New Deal
"When it comes to resolving the tension between the environment and the economy the watchword should be "less is more." If you want to find out how we could all be healthier, wealthier and a lot wiser you should read this book."
--Molly Scott Cato, Reader in Green Economics, Cardiff School of Management and Economics Speaker for the Green Party
"We live in a finite world but with infinite demands. Human wants, political convenience and intellectual inertia trump planetary limits. Tim Jackson makes headway in setting signposts towards a more sustainable future."
--Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED)
"This is one of the most brilliant analyses I've seen. It is a thoughtful and action-oriented masterpiece, with an eye open to how to overcome resistance to the task ahead."
--Arnold Tukker, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research
"Tim Jackson's book clearly demonstrates how our passion for consumption drives unsustainable results and it opens up the potential for a new model of consumerism that delivers a more sustainable world."
-- Chris Tuppen, Chief Sustainability Officer, BT
Sample Chapter
A sample chapter of this title is not available at this time. For further information, please email info@ubcpress.ubc.ca.
Related Topics
Economics/Business
Environmental Studies
Other Ways To Order
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M3H 5T8
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Ordering information for customers outside Canada
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