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Darwin's long battle has disturbing echoes today. We, too, are trapped in the same sort of false illusion that stymied critical thought before his radical breakthrough, except that the myth that envelops us is more dangerous and even more deeply rooted.
直到今天，达尔文那时的长期斗争还有令人不安的回响。和他一样，在实现彻底突破之前， 我们一直被困在妨碍批判性思维的错觉和幻想里，只不过我们所陷入的幻想更加危险,而且更加根深蒂固。
Our great sustaining myth is economic growth: faith that the economy can grow forever, that there are no limits to the wealth we can create from Earth's natural resources. Growth, measured by an increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is what drives government policy worldwide.
我们心中持久不能摆脱的伟大幻想就是经济增长:我们相信经济将会永远增长下去，我们相信利用地球的自然资源能创造永无止境的财富。这种以不断提高的国内生产总值（GDP)为衡量标准的经济增长就是世界各国政府政策的决定性因素。
The equation has been drummed into us for so long that it's received wisdom. Growth equals prosperity and jobs. Growth equals progress.
增长等于繁荣和就业;增长等于进步。这种等式关系被如此长久地灌输给人们，以至于成了人们的普遍信念。
Yet this is a relatively recent turn of events. Using the GDP as a tool to measure growth has only been around since the late 1940s when the UN System of National Accounts was developed. For most of human history, economic growth was a mere blip. Only the last eight generations of humans have experienced consistent growth. As the father of green economics, Herman Daly, points out: "Historically, steady state is the normal condition; growth is an aberration." By "steady state," Daly means an economy with a constant population and "the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption."
然而，用GDP来作为衡最经济增长的手段还是相对较近的一种事态变化，仅仅从 20世纪40年代末才开始，那时联合国提出了国民经济核算体系。在人类历史的大部分时间里，经济增长只是昙花一现。只有在过去八代人的历史中，人类才经历了持续的经济增长。作为绿色经济之父，赫尔曼•戴利指出：“从历史上看，平稳是常态，而增长则是异常状态。”所谓“平稳”，戴利指的是在人口基数比较稳定的情况下“从第一阶段的生产到最后阶段的消费，这两个环节中间物质和能源的流动尽可能保持了最低的水平。”
