The bibliography to Zac Goldsmith’s The Constant Economy includes The Trap by his father, Jimmy Goldsmith.
The bibliography to Zac Goldsmith’s The Constant Economy includes The Trap by his father, Jimmy Goldsmith. When it was published in 1993, The Trap caused a bit of a stir because it challenged the consensus that free trade and globalisation were good for mankind. But it also contained a deeper theme, that the world had become falsely enamoured of the commercialisation of science and technology. Goldsmith père protested not just that economic orthodoxy was wrong, but that society had become too materialistic and complex, too far from nature.
Since the early 1990s these anxieties have been given a new focus. Claims have been made that economic growth has led to ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels, that this has increased the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and that the extra CO2 represents a powerful ‘anthropogenic forcing’ (or man-made cause) in global warming.
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