Pursuing economic growth will kill us all in the end | Letter

I risked prison to stand up against an system that will lead to ecological and societal collapse - we must look for alternative economic models, writes Zoe Cohen

I have read many Guardian articles on economic growth", but on reading this one (Britain the only G7 economy forecast to shrink in 2023, 31 January), I felt I had to write to you. On Friday 27 January, I and six other women received suspended prison sentences for carefully cracking windows at Barclays global HQ in April 2021. We did this to call out Barclays as Europe's biggest fossil fuel funder, and one of the world's leading investors" in ecosystem destruction and plastics pollution. But I also took that action, and risked prison, to call out the whole political economy and the growth-based system that is driving us all off a cliff.

I find it deeply distressing that the Guardian does such strong journalism on for example, carbon bombs and the truths behind carbon offsets, and yet seems not to join the dots with economic growth. Surely you understand that GDP has an almost 1:1 relationship with both energy and materials use? And this isn't going to change any time soon, certainly not in the handful of years we have to body swerve away from Earth system tipping points.