Quote Origin: Growth for the Sake of Growth Is the Ideology of the Cancer Cell

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Edward Abbey? Paul R. Ehrlich? Anne H. Ehrlich? Susan Buckingham? Arthur J. Cordell? Alan Gregg? Apocryphal?

Graph showing growth followed by a crash from Pixabay

Question for Quote Investigator: The rapid and uncontrolled proliferation of cells in the human body is a manifestation of cancer. Environmentalists and conservationists have employed a provocative analogy to criticize unconstrained economic development. Here are two versions:

(1) Perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell.
(2) Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

This saying has been credited to essayist Edward Abbey, biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, and author Arthur J. Cordell. Would you please explore this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest close match located by QI appeared in “LOOK” magazine in November 1969 within an article titled “Land Lovers”. This photo-essay included quotations gathered from people who supported wilderness protection. Edward Abbey’s remarks included the following. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

“The real estate brokers, the engineers itching to build paved roads, have their hearts set on transforming the desert into a replica of greater Los Angeles. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

The concept that the growth of humanity on Earth is analogous to the development of cancerous tissue can be traced further back in time. In 1955 the physician Alan Gregg published an article titled “A Medical Aspect of the Population Problem” in the influential journal “Science”. Gregg’s phrasing was tentative:2

In short, I suggest, as a way of looking at the population problem, that there are some interesting analogies between the growth of the human population of the world and the increase of cells observable in neoplasms: To say that the world has cancer, and that the cancer cell is man, has neither experimental proof nor the validation of predictive accuracy; but I see no reason that instantly forbids such a speculation.

Gregg suggested that the multiplication of cancer cells was similar to the rapid increase of the population from 500 million people in A.D. 1500 to 2 billion people in 1955.

In 1968 Edward Abbey published “Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness”. Abbey opposed water diversion projects that had been proposed to support the growth of cities in the U.S. Southwest. He used the word “cancerous” in the following excerpt:3

They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

In November 1969 “LOOK” magazine printed remarks from Edward Abbey as mentioned previously. A journalist at “The Arizona Daily Star” of Tucson, Arizona noticed the article in “LOOK” and reprinted an excerpt from Abbey’s comments:4

Abbey said, in part, that “the real estate brokers, the engineers itching to build paved roads, have their hearts set on transforming the desert into a replica of greater Los Angeles. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

In January 1970 “Reader’s Digest” printed the remark within a feature called “Quotable Quotes”:5

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
— Edward Abbey, quoted by Daniel Chapman in Look

In February 1970 “Time” magazine published a letter from Susan Buckingham who employed an instance without attribution:6

Sir: It would be wise to recall that growth, self-conscious and undisciplined, is the ideology of the cancer cell. Why this masochistic obsession with bigness?

In April 1970 “The Canadian Field-Naturalist” printed a piece by Arthur J. Cordell who mentioned the saying with an anonymous attribution:7

The ecologists and environmentalists tend to be the most militant on this issue. One ecologist contends that “growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell”.

In 1971 Edward Abbey and photographer Philip Hyde published “Slickrock: The Canyon Country of Southeast Utah”. Abbey applied the analogy again, but he used a different phrasing:8

The fact that planning for growth encourages growth, even forces growth, would not be seen as a serious objection by the majority of Utah-Arizona businessmen and government planners. It would merely excite them to greater enthusiasm. They believe in growth. Why? Ask any cancer cell why it believes in growth.

In 1975 “Playboy” magazine printed an article by Edward Abbey which included a discussion of the power-line cables which were being strung across the Southwest:9

From the silence of the desert to the clamor of Glitter Gulch, the fool’s treasure of one region is transported and transmuted into the nervous neon of another. Energy, they call it, energy for growth. And what is the growth for? Ask any cancer cell.

In March 1981 the “San Francisco Examiner” of California printed a review of a new television program called “Tomorrow/Today”:10

Tonight’s first “Tomorrow/Today” ends with another regular feature, an observation by a scientist-philosopher. Leading off these thoughts-to-ponder is biologist Paul Ehrlich, who questions the concept of eternal economic growth.

“Perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell,” says Ehrlich, drawing a frightening parallel between cancer, which crowds out the body’s healthy cells, and humanity, which is now crowding out all other forms of life on earth.

In June 1981 Paul and Anne Ehrlich published an article in “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” which included a version of the saying credited to Abbey:11

What is required is the political will in the rich nations to mature economically rather than to try to continue growing for growth’s sake (“the creed of the cancer cell,” Edward Abbey once called it).

In 1986 the “San Francisco Examiner” published “Edward Abbey’s Bay Area Journal” in which Abbey criticized the development of the cities of Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona:12

Nowhere more clearly can it be seen that Growth for the sake of Growth is truly the creed of the cancer cell.

(I capitalize the word “Growth” because it refers, in this case, not to normal organic development but to a kind of modern religion, the lunatic ideology of perpetual quantitative increase.)

In 1987 the collection “New Canadian Quotations” contained the following entry:13

Growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Arthur J. Cordell, economic adviser to the Science Council of Canada, quoted in Time, 29 June 1970.

In 2018 “The Guardian” newspaper of London published an article about Paul Ehrlich in which he warned of societal collapse because population growth and overconsumption were “driving civilization over the edge”:14

“It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “Perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell.”

In conclusion, Edward Abbey deserves credit for this quotation based on the November 1969 citation in “LOOK” magazine. The analogy between human growth and cancerous growth has a longer history which can be traced back to a 1955 article by Alan Gregg in “Science”. Paul and Anne Ehrlich used an instance, but they credited Abbey. Arthur J. Cordell used the saying, but he credited an unnamed ecologist.

Image Notes: Graph showing growth followed by a crash from Mediamodifier at Pixabay. The image has been resized and retouched.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.

  1. 1969 November 4, LOOK, Land Lovers, Produced by Daniel Chapman, (Remarks by Edward Abbey), Start Page 54, Quote Page 59, (Statement also appears as a pull quote on page 58), Cowles Communications, Des Moines, Iowa. (Verified with scans; Internet Archive) ↩︎
  2. 1955 May 13, Science, Volume 121, Number 3150, Section: Population Problems, A Medical Aspect of the Population Problem by Alan Gregg (Big Sur, California), Start Page 681, Quote Page 682, Column 1, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington D.C. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  3. 1968 Copyright, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey, Chapter: Water, Quote Page 127, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  4. 1969 November 1, The Arizona Daily Star, Krutch, Park Ranger Abbey In Look’s ‘Land Lover’ List, Quote Page 19A, Column 2, Tucson, Arizona. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  5. 1970 January, Reader’s Digest, Volume 96, Number 573, Quotable Quotes, Quote Page 154,  The Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  6. 1970 February 9, Time, Section: Letters, Letter from: Susan Buckingham of Washington D.C., Time, Inc., New York. (Online Time magazine archive at time.com; Accessed on November 19, 2024) link ↩︎
  7. 1970 April-June, The Canadian Field-Naturalist, Volume 84, Number 2, Section: Reviews, Book Under Review: The Costs of Economic Growth, Book Reviewer: Arthur J. Cordell, (Economic adviser to the Science Council of Canada), Date of Book Review: April 15, 1970, Quote Page 197, Column 1, The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club, Ottawa, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  8. 1971, Slickrock: The Canyon Country of Southeast Utah, Words by Edward Abbey, Photographs and Commentary by Philip Hyde, Chapter 6: From jeep trails to power plants by Edward Abbey, Start Page 70, Quote Page 76, Sierra Club, San Francisco, California. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  9. 1975 December, Playboy, Volume 22, Number 12, The Second Rape of the West by Edward Abbey, Start Page 138, Quote Page 194, Column 1, Playboy, Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  10. 1981 March 4, San Francisco Examiner, Television: O, little star of San Jose by Bill Mandel, Quote Page E1, Column 4, San Francisco, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  11. 1981 June-July, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 37, Number 6, Extinction or a strategy of conservation, Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Start Page 25, Quote Page 27, Column 3, Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Chicago, Illinois. (Google Books Full View) ↩︎
  12. 1986 December 17, San Francisco Examiner, Edward Abbey’s Bay Area Journal: Part Two by Edward Abbey, Quote Page A10, Column 1, San Francisco, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
  13. 1987, New Canadian Quotations by John Robert Colombo, Topic: Growth, Quote Page 152, Column 2, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  14. 2018 March 23, The Guardian, Scientist stands by warning that collapse of civilization is coming, Quote Page 24, Column 2 and 3, London, England. (ProQuest)  ↩︎
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