When
Where
Associate Professor, Arizona State University, Christopher F. Jones
April 12, 2023, at 12:30 PM
Christopher F. Jones is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University. His first book, Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard, 2014) studied the causes and consequences of America's first fossil fuel energy transitions. He is currently working on a book provisionally titled The Invention of Infinite Growth studying the ways economists have come to calculate economic growth with little regard for the natural world. Christopher Jones, will be presenting, "The Invention of Infinite Growth: Memories of a Golden Age and the Optimism of the Dismal Science."
How and why have economists come to calculate the possibility of ever-increasing economic growth with little regard for the natural world on a hot and crowded planet? This talk, based on my in-progress book manuscript, seeks to untangle what I describe as the surprising optimism of a branch of study known as the dismal science. While thinkers across the natural and social sciences have been raising increasing warnings about the dangers of climate change and threats to environmental sustainability for decades, economists have offered a much rosier picture that we can have our cake and eat it too. In this talk, I explore the ways that the three decades after World War II served to cement theories of economic growth that paid little heed to the natural world and established an enduring faith in growth that persists to the present. I'm particularly interested in discussing the ways that memories of this era, sometimes known as the Great Compression or the Great Leveling, have served to reinforce a simplistic view of growth that offers a poor description of reality since the late 1970s and an even worse guide for the future.
This event will be offered in a hybrid format offering attendees the option to join virtually via Zoom or in-person in Chavez 406A.