The GDP growth spell: why do we need to break it?

Abstract

This essay is aimed at presenting arguments to support the position that we need to go beyond an economic model solely focused on GDP growth (growthmania). The current GDP growth spell was cast in a socioeconomic system where policy-makers blindly embraced the goal of continuous GDP growth without assessing whether GDP growth necessarily improves people's lives. We argue that the obsession with GDP growth is not compatible with an ecological-economic view in which the idea of the scale of economic activity matters. Unlimited GDP growth is neither biophysically possible nor economically desirable.