The British Economist Who Became a Celebrity With an Anti-Growth Pitch | The New Republic
A profile of Tim Jackson, exploring his recent work and the challenges he’s tackling in the postgrowth field, written by Nick Romeo for the US magazine The New Republic. The piece is based on conversations and time Romeo spent accompanying Tim.
August 2024
From The New Republic website:
Tim Jackson found unlikely fame by arguing that slower growth will actually make us happier—and more prosperous.
One night in 2009, ecological economist Tim Jackson was walking home in London when his phone rang. The prime minister, he learned, had gotten wind of Jackson’s latest report and gone ballistic.
Jackson had spent the last 18 months writing a report arguing that, on a finite planet, economic growth must also stay within limits. Instead of accepting endless growth as the standard of human flourishing, Jackson and his colleagues at the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission tried to describe what a different sort of world, and different sort of prosperity, might look like.
Jackson knew upending a foundational creed of modern economics would upset people. At a public meeting about Jackson and his colleagues’ work, a Treasury official declared that they wanted to return to living in caves.
But when Jackson picked up the phone that evening, it was just days before a G20 summit in London on how to rebound from the global financial crisis. A report questioning growth, Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to feel, could be an embarrassment.
A BBC interview with Jackson scheduled for the next morning was canceled. The other spots on a planned media blitz also evaporated. Jackson wondered whether the government had sabotaged the report, and assumed it would sink without a trace.
