Good, natural, malignant: five ways people frame economic growth

The way financial growth is framed determines everything from how we address poverty and inequality to how we deal with climate change

Growth is good. We need growth for wealth, for jobs, to help the poor - without it society will collapse. Or, at least, that's the message we're surrounded by, even though logic tells us growth can't go on for ever on a planet with finite resources.

Growth is so strongly framed as good and necessary that rational or technical arguments - pointing to the damage to our planetary life-support systems, for example - go in one ear and out the other. Such messages are worth examining. So how is growth framed?

The UK economy is performing well. UK growth is solid - Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, speech at the University of Sheffield, 12 March 2015

Related: Less material consumption is not the end for business

Sainsbury sees 'green shoots' of recovery as sales beat forecasts - Financial Times, 17 March 2015

I think the biggest task for this government has been about getting the economy moving again - David Cameron, speech at Unilever, 9 January 2015

Related: Nature gives us everything free - let's put it at the heart of everyday economic life

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet - Agent Smith in sci-fi film The Matrix

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Related: Companies cannot keep shying away from setting tough climate targets