Michael Halliday's 1990 paper New ways of Meaning: the challenge to applied linguistics[1] is often credited as a seminal work which provided the stimulus for linguists to consider the ecological context and consequences of language. Among other things, the challenge that Halliday put forward was to make linguistics relevant to overarching contemporary issues, particularly the widespread destruction of the ecosystems that life depends on. The main example Halliday gave was that of 'economic growth', describing how 'countless texts repeated daily all around the world contain a simple message: growth is good.