Back in November the big story arising from the Chancellor’s Budget wasn’t any of the gimmicks and giveaways designed to grab positive headlines, but something seemingly more mundane – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) downgrading its growth forecast.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Governments are obsessively judged by analysts and commentators on one figure, whether it’s going up or down, and by how much: gross domestic product, or GDP.

GDP measures the total economic output, or in other words, the value of all of the goods and services being produced in an economy. While the prospect of infinite growth in the amount of things we consume might sound like a good thing, it would destroy the planet on which we depend.

This isn’t a new argument, for years economists have been arguing that we cannot infinitely grow our economies without exploiting natural resources beyond the brink of no return.

Budget 2017: 'Britain is the world’s sixth largest economy'

So how did we develop this planet-threatening growth obsession, and how do we move beyond it?

GDP growth only seemed to become a concern in the second half of the 20th century, when policymakers adopted it as a means of measuring living standards. Since then governments have used a kind of circular reasoning, where increasing growth itself is seen as a means of maintaining living standards, reducing poverty and improving government finances. Growth is also seen as a way of avoiding difficult questions such as “why is there such vast amounts of inequality?”

These drivers of growth tend to be the result of out-of-date and incomplete understandings of the economy which have seeped into every level of political and economic debate. But there is also another, often overlooked, source of growth-dependency – high levels of private and public debt. A key driver of which is the existence of a money and banking system which, in its current form, works to burden society with an endless supply of debt. While some debt is useful, too much can cripple an economy and lay foundations for a crash.

Over 97 per cent of money in the UK exists as bank deposits. Though most MPs aren’t aware of this, banks create new money when they make loans, and through this process, money is created as an IOU, or debt. As a result the UK economy is one which is based on ever-growing levels of debt. Not only do such high levels of private debt pose serious financial stability risks, but they also fuel the Government’s single track focus on pursuing growth.

The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Brexit The big one. Theresa May has spoken publicly three times since declaring her intent to stand in the Tory Leadership race, and each time she has said, ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ It sounds resolute, but it is helpful to her that Brexit is a made up word with no real meaning. She has said there will be ‘no second referendum’ and no re-entry in to the EU via the back door. But she, like the Leave campaign of which she was not a member, has pointedly not said with any precision what she thinks Brexit means Reuters The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address General election This is very much one to keep off the to do list. She said last week there would be ‘no general election’ at this time of great instability. But there have already been calls for one from opposition parties. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2010 makes it far more difficult to call a snap general election, a difficulty she will be in no rush to overcome. In the event of a victory for Leadsom, who was not popular with her own parliamentary colleagues, an election might have been required, but May has the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party Getty The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address HS2 Macbeth has been quoted far too much in recent weeks, but it will be up to May to decide whether, with regard to the new high speed train link between London, Birmingham, the East Midlands and the north, ‘returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ Billions have already been spent. But the £55bn it will cost, at a bare minimum, must now be considered against the grim reality of significantly diminished public finances in the short to medium term at least. It is not scheduled to be completed until 2033, by which point it is not completely unreasonable to imagine a massive, driverless car-led transport revolution having rendered it redundant EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Heathrow expansion Or indeed Gatwick expansion. Or Boris Island, though that option is seems as finished as the man himself. The decision on where to expand aviation capacity in the south east has been delayed to the point of becoming a national embarrassment. A final decision was due in autumn. Whatever is decided, there will be vast opprobrium PA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Trident renewal David Cameron indicated two days ago that there will be a Commons vote on renewing Britain’s nuclear deterrent on July 18th, by which point we now know, Ms May will be Prime Minister. The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, divided on the issue. This will be an early opportunity to maximise their embarrassment, and return to Tory business as usual EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Scottish Independence Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are in no doubt that the Brexit vote provides the opportunity for a second independence referendum, in which they can emerge victorious. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has the authority to call a second referendum, but Ms May and the British Parliament are by no means automatically compelled to accept the result. She could argue it was settled in 2014 AFP/Getty

Policymakers see increasing income as the easiest way to pay off debts. And the best way to do so is by increasing your productive output – working harder and longer to produce more of the goods and services which GDP measures.

Despite the fact that productivity is faltering and underemployment is the new normal, it is this idea along with the fears of mounting debt levels that locks in GDP growth as the overriding objective of economic policy. To our peril, governments’ preoccupation with growth leads to other important concerns, such as environmental and socioeconomic impacts, being put on the backburner.

It is clear that issues such as climate change and inequality are increasingly becoming too urgent to ignore. These challenges require a bold rethinking of society’s priorities. A good place to start is the dysfunctional money and banking system underpinning it.

This means a discussion of how we create money, and whether it should be created privately as debt, in a way which demands unsustainable growth. There are alternatives, which could allow us to create money sustainably, in a way which works for people.

One option would be to utilise Sovereign Money Creation, or “QE for People”. This would involve the Bank of England creating money through a similar way to conventional quantitative easing, though this money would then be injected into the economy through Government spending on green infrastructure, or even a citizens dividend to pay down private sector debt.

But there is also scope to go further and transition to a fully-fledged Sovereign Money System. This would essentially mean stripping private banks of the power to create money as debt. Positive Money estimates that such policies would allow an additional £50bn per year for 20 years of government sector spending, allowing us to pay for the things society needs with no additional private sector debt.

In shrinking levels of debt across the economy, these policies would free governments from the race for endless economic growth. Instead of sleepwalking into a debt-fuelled dystopia, it is not too late to switch to a money and banking system which paves the way for a more sustainable future.