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In The Ecologist, a UK campaigning magazine, Edward Goldsmith and his colleagues set out the charge against industrial expansion in their A Blueprint for Survival (1972: 15): ‘The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable … we can be certain … that sooner or later it will end.’ Such doom-laden forecasts used to be described as ‘catastrophist’ and were restricted to the wilder fringes of the environmental movement. However, the idea now has wider currency among young people, members of the public and policy-makers. Sustainability is a central motivating idea for environmental campaigners – ensuring that human activity does not compromise the ecology of planet Earth.

One important influence on the rise of environmental movements and public concern about environmental problems can be traced back to a famous report first published in the early 1970s, which set out the case that economic growth could not continue indefinitely. The report and its findings are discussed in ‘Classic studies’ 5.2.