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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Our reading
The degrowth premise that natural limits have been breached contradicts the historical record.
Their wordsThe degrowth premise-that we have breached fixed natural limits-inverts the actual historical record. It is precisely growth that has, again and again, dissolved the limits that were confidently declared final: the Malthusian ceiling on food, the peak-resource panics, the recurring predictions of exhaustion, each overturned not by restraint but by the productivity and substitution that growth alone makes possible.
Our reading
The built environment and planning regulations act as a major brake on British economic growth.
Their wordsIf we ask where the single greatest self-inflicted brake on British growth is to be found, the answer is unambiguous: the built environment. Here, uniquely, there is hardly a market at all. Since the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, development rights have been effectively nationalised.
Their wordsEvery subsidised unit must be cross-subsidised by dearer market-rate units beside it, so each turn of the interventionist ratchet tightens the affordability crisis for everyone who fails to qualify for rationed provision.
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