Liz Truss in her closing speech in Birmingham yesterday spouted the gospel of growth as if it were some new revelation. It is not. It is a tired old pursuit of Conservative and New Labour ministers which has excused deleterious experiments with the economy which it is going to be difficult to rectify. The fact is that a mature economy such as the UK's is not going to achieve the GDP growth figures of an Estonia or a Kenya freed from state socialism and colonialism respectively. Certainly, there will be a rise in GDP as the global business cycle raises the UK along with other nations, but it will then plateau.
The European Environment Agency warns that the only way economic growth can be achieved in the West is by raiding non-renewable resources. Thus there is "loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution and loss of natural capital". We should be instead maintaining our place in the top ten developed nations through transition, taking advantage of social and scientific advances to replace old technologies with new.
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