One of the most apocalyptic of the various prophets of doom who are so vociferous right now is Jean Claude Trichet, who is – wait for it – a banker.

He is the retiring president of the European Central Bank, one of the organisations that is visiting some very nasty medicine on broken countries like Greece and Ireland.

Mr Trichet's preferred prescriptions include slashing public expenditure, cutting pensions and public services, and loosening employment law. He himself won't be dispensing this "tough love" for much longer, as he is about to be succeeded by Mario Draghi, who is no less than a former vice-president of Goldman Sachs. The ECB is unlikely to change its tune.

What alarms people like Messrs Trichet and Draghi, and also politicians like George Osborne, is that growth just ain't coming. Indeed economic growth, in much of Europe, looks like shuddering to a complete stop. This, on the present model, is disastrous. People like me, who position themselves on the soft right, have predicated much of their economic thinking – such it is – on the general assumption that growth is both necessary and can be sustained.

But there is suddenly a huge opportunity here, and it comes for politicians and thinkers in the Green movement. Indeed I'm surprised that such people have not made more of the impending collapse of growth. It could be regarded as slick or opportunist to seize this very dangerous moment to start propagating thegreen agenda, including paramount concern for the environment, as never before. But surely that is not the reason for their current modesty and reticence?

Why are more people on the green left not now stating what until recently used to be unthinkable, that we should just forget about growth altogether and opt for no-growth economies? Why is such thinking not high up the agenda at the current world economic summit in Durban, which seems if anything to be backing away from what little green progress was made at previous summits?

Life is going to get seriously unpleasant for most of us in Europe. Over the next decade many easy assumptions that have guided the behaviour of two or three generations will be jettisoned. But this does present a chance to rethink our fundamental approach to economic activity, and indeed the entire way we live.

One of the saddest things about modern Britain is that many of those who are lucky enough to be in work spend most of their week working hard for their hours of leisure. But what do they then do with that precious time? Three of the most popular activities are watching television, shopping, and watching sport.

These are not necessarily activities that enhance the quality of life. They assist the capitalist and consumerist merry- go-round, but do they make personal toil and industry worthwhile? A lot of television time is taken up with advertising, with ever more powerful – and admittedly creative – ways of persuading us to consume yet more, especially at this time of year, when Christmas is a degraded pastiche of the genuine festival it should be.

Watching professional sport means you are subsidising a pitiful parody of tooth-and-claw capitalism. The rise of agents in football has helped to produce a sick culture of greed and excess. The England rugby team at the recent world cup in New Zealand appeared to be more concerned about money than anything even remotely Corinthian. "That's £35,000 down the toilet" was the reported comment of one England star when his team was knocked out of the tournament by France in the quarter finals.

Despite the relentless pressure on people to consume, despite the measuring of status by possessions and pay, there is undoubted concern about the growing inequality in our society. I'm personally more worried about the way we treat so many of our very young and very old – badly – but then these represent inequalities of a kind. And possibly what used to be derided by people like me as pie in the bluest of skies should no more be scoffed at, as these skies darken by the minute. Maybe it is time, at last, to find another way.

On the other hand the anti- capitalist protesters in London and elsewhere have managed to be articulate yet also very uncertain as to their prescription for a better way. This is surely the moment for people of a green disposition to come up with specific models for no- growth living. We'd all have to be poorer, but being a little less obsessed with consuming might not be so bad. And, in the context of concerns about inequality, the rich would have to get poorer much, much faster than the poor. Although the most difficult thing in all this might be that even the poor would have to get a little poorer too. Maybe we also have to adopt policies, previously abhorred, like the Chinese one of just one child per family.

People like me have sometimes accused, not rudely I hope, the left and the Greens of being naive. What I'm saying now is: OK, maybe your time is about to come. Please give us a coherent political, economic and social prescription, something that reasonable people can take up and even vote for. It's easy to attack people like Mr Trichet. It is much less easy to give us a credible alternative.

And the immediate, infuriating problem with any alternative system concerns our friends in booming emerging economies. Countries like China and Brazil, enormously, heroically successful in terms of growth, can enjoy being our creditors. Or can they?

China's extraordinary success, which may now be stuttering just a little, is based on exporting to the likes of us. If we say: No thanks, we're not big time consumers any more –well, our creditors might get rather peeved. And then what?