The news is all about 'negative growth', the economist's favourite euphemism for recession. Negative growth? There's an oxymoronic denial if ever there was one, as if capitalism can't bear to admit its limitations.

One of the aphorisms I think about in 42: Deep Thought on Life, the Universe and Everything is this from Edward Abbey: 'Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell.'

Economic growth is a shibboleth because it is nothing short of the raison d'etre of global capitalism. Hence the implicit denial when things go wrong. It is the relentless push to be more productive which few question. With the material goods that increased wealth brings, who would want to live in a world that started to question the merits of economic growth?

This is the assumption the environmental crisis is challenging. The force behind Edward Abbey's quote increasingly seems no longer misplaced but quite sensible. For all that, it is still radical. In developing countries, like China and India, the desirability of growth is obvious: to lift millions out of poverty - though if the planet continues to heat up, that success will be short-lived. But for those in the developed and already affluent West, it is a question worth asking.

Some organisations have goals other than growth. Charles Handy mulls over cases in which more is not always better in his book Myself and Other More Important Matters:

'I sometimes suggest to business executives that if they were to ask a symphony orchestra what its growth plans were for the coming year, they might not speak of increasing the number of musicians, or even the number of performances, but would talk more of growing their repertoire and their reputation. Yes, more money would help, but only as a means to achieve those ends. It is no different for other arts organisations, or schools, better often when smaller.'

To challenge the place of economic growth in the modern way of life would be, therefore, nothing less than a paradigm change. But perhaps Charles Handy's discussion about the symphony orchestra presents it as a more appealing possibility.