Progress in human welfare has been driven by progressive political movements and governments that have managed to harness economic resources to deliver robust public goods and fair wages. In fact, the historical record shows that in the absence of these forces, growth has quite often worked against social progress, not for it.

[For the past forty years], guided by the dogmas of neoliberalism, governments have privatised public services, slashed social spending, cut wages and labour protections, handed tax cuts to the richest and sent inequality soaring. In an age of climate breakdown, we need to be doing exactly the opposite.

Growthism is little more than ideology – an ideology that benefits a few at the expense of our collective future. We’re all pushed to step on the accelerator of growth, with deadly consequences for our living planet, all so that a rich elite can get even richer. From the perspective of human life, this is clearly an injustice. And indeed we have been aware of this problem for some time. But from the perspective of ecology, it is even worse – it is a kind of madness.

There is an enormous net flow of resources that goes from poor countries to rich countries. The patterns of extraction that characterised colonisation remain very much in place today. But this time, instead of being seized by force, those resources are being handed over by governments that have been rendered dependent on foreign investment and beholden to the growth imperatives of capitalism.

If we want to have a decent shot at keeping temperatures under 1.5°C, we have to cut global emissions in half by 2030 and get to zero before 2050. It is impossible to overstate how dramatic this trajectory is. It means nothing less than the rapid and dramatic reversal of our present direction as a civilisation.

The problem with economic growth isn’t just that we might run out of resources at some point. The problem is that it progressively degrades the integrity of ecosystems.

As ecological breakdown triggers tipping points, as agricultural output declines, as mass displacement undermines political stability, and as cities are ruined by rising seas, the environmental, social and material infrastructure that underpins the possibility of growth – and indeed the possibility of organised civilisation – will fall apart.

If for whatever reason we don’t manage to stabilise the climate – a real possibility – nuclear sites will be vulnerable to severe storms, rising seas and other disasters that could turn them into radiation bombs. With climate breakdown bearing down on us, relying too much on nuclear could become a dangerous gamble.

It is politically easier to rev up GDP and hope some of it trickles down to the poor than it is to distribute existing income more fairly.