Re your editorial (The Guardian view on Britain’s broken economy: ‘That’s your bloody GDP, not ours’, 13 February), we are frequently reminded of the inadequacy of GDP growth as an objective, given that it includes the money spent on dealing with pollution, sickness, crime etc.
The idea that only more growth will allow us to protect the planet is like saying we can only finance the fire brigade by selling petrol to arsonists.
Nobody, that is, except the chancellor, for whom “growth is the No 1 mission” that “underpins everything else” – schools, hospitals, net zero.
Yet decades of growth since the 1960s have left us with thousands of food banks and facing an environmental abyss.
Donald Power, Dr Neil Lancastle and Andrew Risby respond to an editorial on Britain’s broken economy.
