Tim Jackson

Tim Jackson (born on 4 June 1957) is a British ecological economist and director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity. His most notable work is Prosperity Without Growth.

Tim Jackson (2017).

Prosperity Without Growth

• Prosperity, in any meaningful sense of the term, is about the quality of our lives and relationships, about the resilience of our communities and about our sense of individual and collective meaning.
  • Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2017 edition, Routledge, pages xxxviii-xxxix (ISBN 9781138935419).

• Long before we run out of oil, coal and gas, we will have to stop extracting them from the ground and burning them, if dangerous climate change is to be averted.
  • Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2017 edition, Routledge, page 20.

• The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. [...] But question it we must. [...] No subsystem of a finite system can grow indefinitely – at least in physical terms. Economists have to be able to answer the question of how a continually growing economic system can fit within a finite ecological system. The only answer available is that growth in dollars must be 'decoupled' from growth in physical throughputs and environmental impacts. But [...] this hasn't so far achieved what's needed. There are no prospects for it doing so in the immediate future. And the sheer scale of decoupling required to meet the limits set out here (and stay within them in perpetuity while the economy keeps on growing) staggers the imagination. In short, we have no alternative but to question growth. The myth of growth has failed us.
  • Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2017 edition, Routledge, page 21.

• We must establish the ecological bounds on human activity. We must tackle the systemic inequalities which undermine social progress. We must fix the illiterate economics of relentless growth [...] A different economics is achievable. A better and fairer social logic lies within our grasp.
  • Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2017 edition, Routledge, page 227.

About

• With much of the world in turmoil, calling for higher economic growth is every politician's comfort blanket of choice. But Tim Jackson compellingly urges those politicians to give up their comfort blanket, to re-think our continuing dependence on economic growth, and to start preparing – urgently – for a world where such growth is no longer viable as its environmental cost massively exceeds its benefits.
  • Jonathon Porritt, founder and director of the Forum for the Future, cited in Prosperity Without Growth, 2017 edition.

See also

• Thomas Piketty