Author: Phillip R. Polefrone

The history of environmentalist thought is structured, as often as not, by too much and too many: too much stuff, too many people; too much deforestation, too many poisoned aquifers. Capitalism, as its supporters and critics alike would surely agree, thrives on exactly this too-muchness. Growth is its sole commandment. It hardly needs to be said that these truths can’t coexist, that a system that needs to keep growing to survive is ill suited to a full planet running rapidly out of resources. The doctrine of endless growth, which must ignore this fact, requires an ecological illiteracy best summed...