McNeill Douglas

Since the Limits to Growth report was published in 1972 it has been widely known that a commitment to endless growth was putting us on course for environmental disaster--so why have we failed to take decisive political action in the half-century since then? In The Meaning of Growth, Richard McNeill Douglas uses interpretive social science to uncover the cultural roots of political resistance to environmental science and policy.

Through a close reading of anti-environmentalist rhetoric the book identifies its idolisation of growth as a defence of a modern (Western-European) world-view, focusing on values of freedom, power, and immortality. The significance of these findings is drawn out by applying the ’secularisation thesis’, a theoretical account of the development of a modern understanding of reality from a theological world-view to which it is ostensibly opposed. This framework is used to offer a deep interpretation of what is at stake in environmental debate: that to accept there are limits to growth means abandoning crucial elements of a faith in a theodicy of progress that makes life meaningful in a secular age. Douglas concludes by suggesting that the precondition for political action on the environment is a change of philosophical perspective that provides for a sense of meaning in a world of limits.

This book should be of interest to academics in the fields of environmental sociology and communications studies, as well as activists interested in understanding the motivations of anti-environmentalist campaigners and how to counter their influence.

Richard McNeill Douglas is a research fellow of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey, and fellow of the Westminster Abbey Institute. Previously, Douglas has worked at the UK Parliament, for the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth. His writing on the environment and political economy has appeared in three books and a range of publications, including Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Politics, International Journal of Green Economics, Social Epistemology, Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, Political Quarterly, Prospect, Monthly Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, The Mint Magazine, Left Foot Forward, and Church Times.