James Gustave Speth

Perhaps sooner than most think, there should come a point when public demand in the United States for corrective action to free us from fossil fuels is sufficiently intense that, if Congress and a  unified NGO community are prepared, then at that point decisive, major legislative action could finally be possible. 

Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. Productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption: all must go continually up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It is widely believed that growth is always worth the price that must be paid for it—even when it undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, and our sense of place and continuity.

The idea of economic growth as an unquestioned force for good is ingrained in the American psyche. But a longtime environmental leader argues it’s time for the U.S. to reinvent its economy into one that focuses on sustaining communities, family life, and the natural world.