ABSTRACT
This essay will be concerned not with the desirability or ecological necessity of zero growth, whether of population or of GNP, but rather with its feasibility and possible secondary consequences. Many advocates of zero growth have a strong antitechnology bias, assuming that zero growth can be achieved merely by the arrest of scientific and technological progress. Indeed, zero growth probably could be achieved in this way, but only at a high price in human suffering and social coercion. My proposition is, in fact, the opposite, namely that zero growth at acceptable human and social cost, if it is attainable at all, can be achieved only by the use of very sophisticated technology and scientific understanding, including, of course, social as well as physical and biological technology.
