Prosperity without growth

A TED talk from Professor Tim Jackson, the author of the acclaimed book "Prosperity Without Growth". Talking about prosperity and hope he takes us, reasonably painlessly, though the conflict between our economy's insatiable need for growth and the inextricable link between growth and carbon emissions.

Jackson argues that "prosperity" isn't directly linked to income - and that "human well being" doesn't improve with increased wealth - that in fact there's a good deal of evidence to show that the world's wealthiest economies are experiencing serious declines in "well-being indexes".

Recognising a human need to:

"spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that wont last on people we don't care about"

He argues that our economy has developed in a way that only serves the narrowest and most self serving aspects aspect of our nature and the solution to escaping the malign spiral growth is to promote a system which invests in low carbon infrastructure and social value.