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The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Came to Believe a Dangerous Delusion
A history of how the pursuit of growth has kept us from creating a more sustainable and just world.
Most economists believe that growth is the surest path to better lives. This has proven to be one of humanity’s most powerful and dangerous ideas. It shapes policy across the globe, but it fatally undermines the natural ecosystems necessary to sustain human life. How did we get here? In The Invention of Infinite Growth, environmental historian Christopher F. Jones takes us through two hundred and fifty years of economic thinking to examine the ideal of growth, its powerful influence, and the crippling burdens many decisions made in its name have placed on us all. Jones argues that the pursuit of growth has never reflected its costs, because economists downplay environmental degradation. What’s worse, skyrocketing inequality and diminishing improvements in most people’s well-being mean growth too often delivers too little for too many. Jones urges economists to engage more broadly with other ways of thinking, as well as with citizens and governments to recognize and slow infinite growth’s impact on the real world.
Both accessible and eye-opening, The Invention of Infinite Growth offers hope for the future. Humans have not always believed that economic growth could or should continue, and so it is possible for us to change course. We can still create new ideas about how to promote environmental sustainability, human welfare, and even responsible growth, without killing the planet and ourselves.
Most economists believe that growth is the surest path to better lives. This has proven to be one of humanity’s most powerful and dangerous ideas. It shapes policy across the globe, but it fatally undermines the natural ecosystems necessary to sustain human life. How did we get here? In The Invention of Infinite Growth, environmental historian Christopher F. Jones takes us through two hundred and fifty years of economic thinking to examine the ideal of growth, its powerful influence, and the crippling burdens many decisions made in its name have placed on us all. Jones argues that the pursuit of growth has never reflected its costs, because economists downplay environmental degradation. What’s worse, skyrocketing inequality and diminishing improvements in most people’s well-being mean growth too often delivers too little for too many. Jones urges economists to engage more broadly with other ways of thinking, as well as with citizens and governments to recognize and slow infinite growth’s impact on the real world.
Both accessible and eye-opening, The Invention of Infinite Growth offers hope for the future. Humans have not always believed that economic growth could or should continue, and so it is possible for us to change course. We can still create new ideas about how to promote environmental sustainability, human welfare, and even responsible growth, without killing the planet and ourselves.
376 pages, Hardcover
Published October 14, 2025
89 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 17, 2025
Economist Kenneth Boulding once said that “anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Despite this warning, the mantra that “growth is good” remains barely questioned today.
Christopher Jones’ book The Invention of Infinite Growth provides an insightful review of how delivering economic growth has become the most powerful imperative in politics over the past seventy-five years despite growing evidence that it is also the greatest single threat to human sustainability.
Jones reminds us that the discipline of economics did not even exist in the 18th Century. Rather there was “moral and natural philosophy”. Of the early philosophers it was Malthus in 1798 who warned that population growth would exceed food supply. Adam Smith in his 1776 Wealth of Nations formulated the idea of the invisible hand of the market guiding even selfish interests into social benefit. However even Smith recognized that “Land constitutes by far the greatest…wealth of every extensive nation”.
Nowadays the ideas of Smith and his peers are known as ‘classical economics’.
Later in the 19th Century, came the birth of ‘neoclassical economics’. This coincided with the pivot from the term “political economy” to “economics” and the introduction of mathematical concepts into the field.
By the turn into the 20th Century the concept of economics as a discipline started to take hold.
In this ‘new’ discipline of economics, there was no great emphasis on the desirability of “economic growth”. In fact the experience of the Great Depression brought forward the idea that a stable and static economy that met people’s basic needs was a desirable state of affairs. And after the Second World War there were great fears that the sudden removal of defence spending in the USA would lead to depressed conditions.
Instead the USA went through a post-war boom with wealth being shared widely in society and a substantial middle class created. With this experience, the idea that “growth is good” arose in the 1950s.
With an implicit assumption that there would be no constraints or limits from the planet’s resources, the idea of earthly constraints was ignored. The prevailing idea was that market price signals would generate technological advancement and improved access to any required resources, or substitutes would be found.
The “growth is good” bus seemed unstoppable. But when Limits of Growth was published by the Club of Rome in 1972, it garnered worldwide media attention. Here was an MIT team using newfangled computer modelling to demonstrate that negative feedback loops undermined natural systems necessary for human survival. A continuation of current exponential trends, they said, would end in a collapse scenario.
The report was condemned by the world’s most influential economists. Solow considered it was “worthless as science and as a guide to public policy”. The Limits of Growth report, and a small cohort of economists warning of the constraints of the natural world, turned out to be barely a speed bump on the road to economic growth.
The “growth is good” view therefore pervaded economic thinking and influenced the new generation of economists.
Fast forward to today. There is a greater recognition of the constraints posed by the natural world. More economists are questioning neoclassical theory. Some of these economists such as Herman Daly are profiled in the book. There is also more questioning of the marginal benefits of increasing wealth on well-being. Nevertheless, the most influential economists of today remain the neo-classicists who continue to train the latest generation of economists.
Author Christopher Jones has chosen to focus on economists instead of business executives and lobby groups because economists pioneered the idea of infinite growth and retain a privileged position to pronounce on its possibilities. They have provided the intellectual legitimacy for vested interests opposed to environmental sustainability.
The Invention of Infinite Growth achieves its goal to rethink growth in the context of the present realities of climate change, stagnant (or declining) well-being in developed countries, rampant inequality and a planet under duress. It is essential reading for understanding how our thinking has become paralysed and blinkered by lived memory. Christopher Jones has given us a well-researched, informative and timely wake up call.
For full review: https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/t...
[I received an Advance Review Copy from the publisher]
Christopher Jones’ book The Invention of Infinite Growth provides an insightful review of how delivering economic growth has become the most powerful imperative in politics over the past seventy-five years despite growing evidence that it is also the greatest single threat to human sustainability.
Jones reminds us that the discipline of economics did not even exist in the 18th Century. Rather there was “moral and natural philosophy”. Of the early philosophers it was Malthus in 1798 who warned that population growth would exceed food supply. Adam Smith in his 1776 Wealth of Nations formulated the idea of the invisible hand of the market guiding even selfish interests into social benefit. However even Smith recognized that “Land constitutes by far the greatest…wealth of every extensive nation”.
Nowadays the ideas of Smith and his peers are known as ‘classical economics’.
Later in the 19th Century, came the birth of ‘neoclassical economics’. This coincided with the pivot from the term “political economy” to “economics” and the introduction of mathematical concepts into the field.
By the turn into the 20th Century the concept of economics as a discipline started to take hold.
In this ‘new’ discipline of economics, there was no great emphasis on the desirability of “economic growth”. In fact the experience of the Great Depression brought forward the idea that a stable and static economy that met people’s basic needs was a desirable state of affairs. And after the Second World War there were great fears that the sudden removal of defence spending in the USA would lead to depressed conditions.
Instead the USA went through a post-war boom with wealth being shared widely in society and a substantial middle class created. With this experience, the idea that “growth is good” arose in the 1950s.
With an implicit assumption that there would be no constraints or limits from the planet’s resources, the idea of earthly constraints was ignored. The prevailing idea was that market price signals would generate technological advancement and improved access to any required resources, or substitutes would be found.
The “growth is good” bus seemed unstoppable. But when Limits of Growth was published by the Club of Rome in 1972, it garnered worldwide media attention. Here was an MIT team using newfangled computer modelling to demonstrate that negative feedback loops undermined natural systems necessary for human survival. A continuation of current exponential trends, they said, would end in a collapse scenario.
The report was condemned by the world’s most influential economists. Solow considered it was “worthless as science and as a guide to public policy”. The Limits of Growth report, and a small cohort of economists warning of the constraints of the natural world, turned out to be barely a speed bump on the road to economic growth.
The “growth is good” view therefore pervaded economic thinking and influenced the new generation of economists.
Fast forward to today. There is a greater recognition of the constraints posed by the natural world. More economists are questioning neoclassical theory. Some of these economists such as Herman Daly are profiled in the book. There is also more questioning of the marginal benefits of increasing wealth on well-being. Nevertheless, the most influential economists of today remain the neo-classicists who continue to train the latest generation of economists.
Author Christopher Jones has chosen to focus on economists instead of business executives and lobby groups because economists pioneered the idea of infinite growth and retain a privileged position to pronounce on its possibilities. They have provided the intellectual legitimacy for vested interests opposed to environmental sustainability.
The Invention of Infinite Growth achieves its goal to rethink growth in the context of the present realities of climate change, stagnant (or declining) well-being in developed countries, rampant inequality and a planet under duress. It is essential reading for understanding how our thinking has become paralysed and blinkered by lived memory. Christopher Jones has given us a well-researched, informative and timely wake up call.
For full review: https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/t...
[I received an Advance Review Copy from the publisher]
July 15, 2025
This was a bit of a slog, although the premise is intriguing. Having just read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, this book kind of goes hand in hand with that, although it's certainly not as critical of capitalism (or critical of capitalism at all). This book instead focuses specifically on "the dismal science" of economics. A few centuries ago, "economists" though certainly not in the modern sense of the word, like Malthus or Adam Smith understood a basic truth: we live in a finite world with finite resources. In other words, their analysis of economy took the natural world into consideration. "Growth" was invented after their time, especially post-World War II when economies the world over were growing, when economists genuinely started to believe that the economy would, could, and should continue growing forever. Economists genuinely started to believe that economic growth would not be limited by the natural world, instead humans could just use up resources forever and either invent new resources or switch to different resources. If this sounds like the height of hubris, that's because it is. Many of these economists (Solow, Nordhaus, Stiglitz, Diamond, etc.) recognize their own hubris but still do not even question why they should consider how the natural world plays into their little economic models. The reason this is a dangerous delusion is because of the effect of permanent growth on the climate.
This book contains a long history of various economic theories, including what came before growth, how growth was invented, and how growth permeated every single aspect of economic study and theory, which in turn permeated every single aspect of modern human society. My main gripe with it I think is that even in the conclusion, when we get to the point where the author is arguing that economics needs to start taking the natural world into consideration again, and growth for growth's sake isn't good (see, e.g., the growing level of inequality worldwide), he still talks about growth! Some of the "new" questions economists should ask apparently is how can we do "good growth." Like huh??? Even this author can't imagine a world without growth or economics without growth. Astonishing.
Netgalley provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book contains a long history of various economic theories, including what came before growth, how growth was invented, and how growth permeated every single aspect of economic study and theory, which in turn permeated every single aspect of modern human society. My main gripe with it I think is that even in the conclusion, when we get to the point where the author is arguing that economics needs to start taking the natural world into consideration again, and growth for growth's sake isn't good (see, e.g., the growing level of inequality worldwide), he still talks about growth! Some of the "new" questions economists should ask apparently is how can we do "good growth." Like huh??? Even this author can't imagine a world without growth or economics without growth. Astonishing.
Netgalley provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 9, 2025
This book argues that the pursuit of infinite economic growth is a dangerous idea, leading to environmental degradation and limited well-being improvements for most people. The book calls for a shift toward sustainability and responsible growth to protect the planet and ourselves.
I had high hopes for this book, and it didn’t disappoint. Engaging and thorough, it’s written in a clear style, bringing this important topic to life. The Western view has been distorted by centuries of colonialism with its accompanying extraction of wealth, labor, and natural resources, which has hidden the true cost of consumer goods.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
I had high hopes for this book, and it didn’t disappoint. Engaging and thorough, it’s written in a clear style, bringing this important topic to life. The Western view has been distorted by centuries of colonialism with its accompanying extraction of wealth, labor, and natural resources, which has hidden the true cost of consumer goods.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews