The Invention of Infinite Growth

How Economists Forgot About the Natural World

Christopher F. Jones

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Oneworld Publications
16 October 2025

International institutions; Macroeconomics; Economic growth; Global warming

For

decades now, mainstream economics has lost contact with reality. As early as

1974, the great Robert Solow made the outlandish claim that 'the world can,

in effect, get along without natural resources'. The important thing, they

said, was growth. Growth would fix everything. Meanwhile, scientists were

busy confirming the direct link between increasing economic activity and

ecological upheaval.

It didn't have to happen this way. Over the past century, economists have

created a number of powerful ways to examine and predict the world,

and they did not always consider the environment outside the scope of

their inquiry. In fact, in 1931 Harold Hotelling published a vitally

important article which might have changed history – if only anyone had

understood it.

Through the long battle to put a number on our world, Jones examines

the series of choices made by the dismal science over the last two centuries,

and lights the path for the new economic ideas we will need as we step into

the Anthropocene.

By: Christopher F. Jones
Imprint: Oneworld Publications
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 33mm
ISBN: 9780861540044
ISBN 10: 0861540042
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 16 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Christopher Jones is a historian of energy, economics, and the environment based at Arizona State University. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Environment and was a Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow in Natural Resources and Political Economy at the University of California-Berkeley, and is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014).

Reviews for The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Forgot About the Natural World

‘Clear, enjoyable and insightful… Jones has achieved a scholarly miracle. The origins and intellectual success of the growth fetish among Anglo-American economists, and the policymakers who listen to them, is among the most consequential yet neglected stories of modern times.’ —J. R. McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun ‘Superb scholarship and writing on the most important untold story of our time.’ —David W. Orr, author of Dangerous Years