"Instead of growth at all costs, a new economic model allows us to thrive while saving the planet."

We've "been there," and only recently.

What do you know? Chance the gardener was right, after all.

Now, to continue the doughnut riff:

Finally, a breakthrough alternative to growth economics – the doughnut, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

So what are we going to do about it? This is the only question worth asking. But the answers appear elusive. Faced with a multifaceted crisis – the capture of governments by billionaires and their lobbyists, extreme inequality, the rise of demagogues, above all the collapse of the living world – those to whom we look for leadership appear stunned, voiceless, clueless. Even if they had the right courage to act, they have no idea what to do.

The most they tend to offer is more economic growth: the fairy dust supposed to make all the bad stuff disappear. Never mind that it drives ecological destruction; that it has failed to relieve structural unemployment or soaring inequality; that, in some recent years, almost all the increment in incomes has been harvested by the top 1%. As values, principles and moral purpose are lost, the promise of growth is all that’s left ...

What do you know? Chance the gardener was right, after all.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
-- author unknown

The book is Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, by Kate Raworth, and if this essay is any indication, I need to read it soon.

On second thought, it just might put a few academicians and One Southern Indiana functionaries out of work.

As such, it needs to be read even faster.

Old economics is based on false ‘laws of physics’ – new economics can save us, by Kate Raworth (The Guardian)

It is time to ditch the belief that economies obey rigid mechanical rules, which has widened inequality and polluted our planet. Economics is evolving

... So if the economy is not best thought of as a mechanism that returns to equilibrium and follows fixed laws of motion, how should we think of it? Like the living world: it’s complex, dynamic and ever-evolving. And for economists, that means it’s time for a metaphorical career change: from engineer to gardener. Let’s take off the hard hat and give up on reaching for the economy’s control levers because they simply don’t exist. Instead, put on some gardening gloves, pick up a pair of secateurs, and start to steward the economic garden. And if you think that sounds laissez faire, then you’ve never done a hard day’s work in the garden: it calls for getting stuck in, digging, pruning, weeding and watering the plants as they grow and mature.

How can economic gardeners help to create a thriving economy, one that is inclusive and sustainable and will help to achieve the sustainable development goals? By following two core principles: make it regenerative and distributive by design.