Dear Sir/Madam,

When it comes to economics, the Guardian is not nearly as "progressive" as some of its  editors and contributors seem to think (Today's Leader: "Amazing growth").

400 years ago virtually everyone believed unquestionably in an Earth-centred universe - 50 years after Copernicus had suggested a Sun-centred alternative.

So long as no one took the idea too seriously (i.e. literally), the powers that be (the Catholic Church) were happy to tolerate it being discussed (as a useful model for applying calculations to). When Galileo (a true "progressive" of his day) suggested that the idea should be understood literally, the Church felt its authority (based on the Bible) threatened and forced him to retract.

We are in a comparable situation today with respect to Sustainability. Thirty years after the Club of Rome published "The Limits of Growth" suggesting that economic growth could not continue indefinitely on a planet with limited resources and a finite carrying capacity, the powers that be are still refusing to take the concept of "Spaceship Earth " literally.

When the likes of myself insist that it must be, we are not hauled before the inquisition - just laughed at and ignored.

"Wachstum, Wachstum über alles" is a modern rendering of the old German national anthem, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles". We all know where it got them. The new version, which translates unlyrically as "Economic growth above everything", is an international anthem and is leading not to national but to global catastrophe.

I suggest that one (or more) of you takes a look at my homepage, where I am trying to make clear why it is absolutely essential to put the "demands of sustainability" at the centre of human concern and activity, in place of "economic demands" (not withstanding the revolutionary implications), before it is too late and the whole world finds itself in comparable state to Germany, 1933 - 1945. Only this time the death toll will be not in the 10's but in the 100's (possibly in the 1000's) of millions, and there will no one (and few resources) to provide a Marshal Plan.

 

Roger Hicks

www.spaceship-earth.org