The economic crisis: The limits of twentieth-century economics and growth

Abstract

ECONOMIC GROWTH IS A RECENT PHENOMENON in human history, becoming noticeable within a single lifetime only since the eighteenth century (i.e., since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the development of the modern market economy, and the transition to fossil fuels). Just prior to the Industrial Revolution, it took the English economy more than 400 years to double in size. Growth rates steadily increased thereafter, with a great acceleration in economic growth, resource depletion, waste emissions, and ecological degradation beginning around 1950. The global economy grew ninefold in the twentieth century even as population quadrupled. According to World Bank data, the global economy’s most recent doubling in size (as measured by gross domestic product) took just more than a decade, from 2003 to 2014.