Five billion years from now, the Sun will run out of hydrogen. Its core will collapse and its surface will expand to millions of times its present size. As Earth is engulfed in fiery apocalypse, all economic growth will come to an end, fulfilling, at last, the long-standing prophecy of many environmental scientists.
That endless economic growth on a finite planet is impossible has been a verity passed on from generation to generation of environmentalists as deep insight. Yet it is really little more than a tautology. Given its presuppositions — that growth is “endless” and the planet “finite” — the claim cannot be anything other than true.
Notifications
