37 W E NEED TO CHANGE Ideas of Growth and Development in a Time of Crisis of Fossil Energy and Capitalism Mladen Domazet Group 22, Zagreb e purpose of this paper is to lay the groundwork, and provoke others to dig it up, for the holistic understanding of the economic hopes and geophysical drivers behind the themes of green economy and degrowth. It first fights for the voice in which to frame the warning of global civilizational collapse, its physical and historic drivers and experiential instantiations. e paper surveys the opinions of scholars from environmental science, biology, history, leſtist social theory and economics addressing the notion that the global civilisation as we know it is facing a collapse of human societies and practices sustaining it 1 . Whilst there are historical narratives that evoke hope for a technological overcoming of this problem, in the text I endeavour to show how such a gamble is based on ontological confusion about the fundamental elements of the modern developmental success. e paper elucidates how the key collapse- mitigating model is not a maer of small life-style changes reliant on technological transcence of physical constraints, but a maer of serious social restructuring that would replace the missing technological fix. But for that to become democratically acceptable, the societies must renegotiate the indicators and definitions of what wellbeing consists in, whlist humanity must redefine what its endurance is to consist of, not hope for the miracle of green economy. Key words: development, political economy, climate change, nature, civilisation, capitalism Of late years a determined aempt has been made to rewrite history in economic terms. But this does not go deep enough. Man’s thought and social life are built on his economic life; but this, in its turn, rests on biological foundations. Climate and geology between them decide where the raw materials of human industry are to be found, where manufactures can be established; and climate decides where the main springs of human energy shall be released. Changes of climate cause migrations, and migrations bring about not only wars, but the fertilizing intermingling of ideas necessary for rapid advance of civilization. (Huxley 1953: 61) [Critical rationalism owes its inspiration] to the entire Enlightenment ambition to cre- ate a historically grounded human science which would one day lead to the creation of a universal civilisation capable of making all individuals independent, autonomous, freed from above and below, self-knowing, and dependent solely on each other for survival. […] Much of what modern civilization has achieved we obviously owe to many factors, from increased medical knowledge to information technologies to vastly improved methods of transport, which although they are indirect legacy of the Enlightenment, and the revolu- tions in science and technology which both preceded and followed it, have no immediate or direct connection to its ideals. But our ability even to frame our understanding of the world in terms of something larger than our own small patch of ground, our own culture, family, or religion clearly does. (Pagden 2013: 315, 350-351) 1 About Group 22 see more at: hp://www.grupa22.hr/pocetna/about-us/. DOI:10.15378/1848-9540.2014.37.01 original scientific paper, submitted 1.5.2014., accepted 20.7.2014. etnološka tribina 37, vol. 44, 2014., str. 37-71