Society

Participating in democracy - preface to The urban village: a charter for democracy and sustainable development in the city, by Alberto Magnaghi. To be published by Zed Books in September 2005.

The gene for unemployment - There is an growing tendency to blame human ills - physical and psychological - on 'defective' genes. But is it our genes that are defective? Or is it rather the pathological environment in which we live? Deprived of community, eating nutritionally impoverished foods, surrounded by industrial pollution ... the raw conditions of life for billions of people make a healthy and happy existence impossible. How convenient for industry to blame all this on our defective genes - and then to sell us 'solutions' in the form of biotechnology. Editorial for the Doomsday Funbook (February 2006).

In this Letter to the Guardian, April 2002, Edward Goldsmith responds to charges made against him in the Guardian by commentator George Monbiot.

Why development creates poverty - "Development ... is above all the gradual disembedding from their social context of all such functions that were previously provided for free, their monetization and takeover by the state and the corporations... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 32 No. 6, July / August 2001, under the title "Poverty, the child of progress".

Can humanity adapt to the world that science is creating? - human beings evolved as small bands of hunter-gatherers, and our fundamental, instinctive nature remains adapted to that role. Small wonder then that we are so maladjusted to the world which we have created. As we pursue the path of 'progress', fully expecting that science, technology and economic growth will lead us into a future of happiness and prosperity, we are only drawing further away from our origins, and from our true natures. Unpublished, 25 January 2001.

The last word: a personal commentary - "the development of the global economy ... will, we were assured, usher in an era of unprecedented prosperity for all. However ... it can only lead for most of humanity to an unprecedented increase in general insecurity, unemployment, poverty, disease, malnutrition and environmental disruption ... ". This essay was written as Chapter 26 of The Case Against the the Global Economy: and for a turn towards localisation edited by Edward Goldsmith and Jerry Mander, 2001.

Hell on Earth: mankind and the environment - Humanity has transformed the planet almost unrecognisably, now we talk of re-engineering ourselves to fit ... how we can miss the point so dramatically? Published in The Ecologist Vol. 30 No. 7, October 2000.

Cooking up rightwing connections - In this letter published in the Guardian on Tuesday 18 July 2000, Edward Goldsmith responds to "Age of Rage" by Fred Pearce.

Gaia and the global corporations (original version) - the keynote address delivered to the International Forum on Globalization in April 1998. It argues for "a network of loosely connected local economies ... rooted in a particular society to which they are accountable economically, socially, ecologically, and morally, and catering largely, though not entirely, for local and regional markets ... ".

Re-embedding religion in society, the natural world and the cosmos - written in 1997 following Edward Goldsmith's participation in a meeting on Patmos the previous year, to discuss religious aspects of the protection of the natural world. He argues that the Church must develop a "new theology ... based on what we are finding out about the original cosmic nature of the Judaeo-Christian tradition" and "have the courage to side with all those people who seek to reverse economic development and in particular the globalization of this fatal process".

Open letter to Judy Maciejowska - this powerful letter, dated 8 March 1995, was written to Green Party activist Judy Maciejowska

Development, biospheric ethics and a new way forward - Contribution to The Future of Progress - Reflections on environment and development edited by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering and Steven Gorelick on behalf of ISEC (the International Society for Ecology and Culture. This is a collection of essays that challenge the Western notions of progress that dominate the current debate on environment and development. Published by Green Books, revised edition 1995;

Work! Work! Work! - the history of industrialism is the story of producing more with fewer people. Teddy Goldsmith looks at the implications. Published in Real World No. 4, Autumn 1994.

Eggs, eugenics and economics a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 24 No. 2, March / April 1994, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "What makes the new reproductive technologies different is the way they fragment human tissue itself into factors of mass production and commodities - all being enclosed and transformed into scarce resources circulating in a highly centralised market system ... placing new forms of power in the hands of influential economic actors "

To keep to the Way society must be able to correct any divergence from it - chapter 65 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

The vernacular community is the unit of homeotelic behaviour - chapter 60 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

The vernacular economy is localized and hence largely self-sufficient - chapter 59 of The Way: An Ecological World View, originally published in 1992. This text is taken from the revised and enlarged edition, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1998.

Free Trade and GATT - this talk was delivered at the India International Centre on 13 December 1991 as part of a series of lectures and meetings organised by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage in 1991-1992. It was then published by INTACH in Towards Hope - an ecological approach to the future by Vandana Shiva, Jeremy Seabrook, Gunther Hilliges, Upendra Baxi, Edward Goldsmith and Paul Ekins, in December 1992, as part of its "Studies in ecology and sustainable development" series. "When you allow the market to decide our fate, you are actually saying that economic considerations must decide our fate. Then there is nothing to stop us from destroying our planet. It is happening very, very quickly indeed. In my opinion, the only hope we have if we were going to keep this planet more or less habitable is to do precisely the opposite - to make sure our economic activities are ruthlessly and systematically subordinated to social, ecological and climatic considerations. I do not think we have any alternative to doing this."

New Lamps for Old - Edward Goldsmith, Publisher of The Ecologist, talks with Satish Kumar, Director Of Schumacher College (video version, hosted by video.google). The interview was published by Schumacher College as a video in the Schumacher Series, produced by Phil Shepherd in 1991.We also have a New Lamps for Old transcript on the website.

New Lamps for Old - transcript. Edward Goldsmith, Publisher of The Ecologist, talks with Satish Kumar, Director Of Schumacher College. The interview was published by Schumacher College as a video in the Schumacher Series, produced by Phil Shepherd in 1991. A video version of New Lamps for Old is also available.

Green Revolutionary - Part 2 - The Solution: people and planet - a TV documentary by Edward Goldsmith, first broadcast on Channel 4 (UK) in 1990 as part of the Fragile Earth series. "Teddy Goldsmith is the grandfather of the modern environmental movement. He argues that the planetary crisis facing us today cannot be solved by further economic progress and technological innovation. Planet Earth can only be saved from geocide through the co-operative efforts of ordinary people guided by their faith in traditional wisdom."

Green Revolutionary - Part 1 - The Problem: industrial society - a TV documentary by Edward Goldsmith, first broadcast on Channel 4 (UK) in 1990 as part of the Fragile Earth series. "Teddy Goldsmith is the grandfather of the modern environmental movement. He argues that the planetary crisis facing us today cannot be solved by further economic progress and technological innovation. Planet Earth can only be saved from geocide through the co-operative efforts of ordinary people guided by their faith in traditional wisdom."

A currency for every community - "To reconstitute local economies is an imperative if we are to prevent misery and chaos when the global economy collapses. We need them in any case to reduce our environmental impact and to render possible local co-operation and solidarity ... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 4, July / August 1998. Co-written with Perry Walker.

Survival and Modernity - a dialogue on our times - Edward Goldsmith and Krishna Chaitanya in conversation. "The central thesis of this dialogue shared by the two thinkers ... is that the industrial way of life is no longer sustainable. It must end, one way or another, within the foreseeable future ...". First published by India International Centre - Quarterly, spring 1987, reprinted in Vivekananda Kendra Patrika, February 1988.

A theoretical non-disciplinary approach to environmental education - "If environmental education is to succeed in preventing people from destroying their natural environment, then it must consist of very much more than communicating to our youth apparently value-free scientific knowledge of the importance of preserving what remains of it ... ". Unpublished, 1985.

Enemies of society? - the Greens are the true conservatives, argues Goldsmith. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 14 No. 5/6, 1984.

Industrial pollution: getting away with the crime - in the UK, there is little effective legal sanction against even the most egregiously criminal industrial polluters. But in the USA, aggressive prosecutors armed with effective environmental laws have achieved remarkable successes. This editorial article, co-written with Peter Bunyard, was published in The Ecologist Vol. 14 No. 4 1984.

Social and cultural destruction - Published as Chapter 3 of The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams: Volume 1. Overview. Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1984. By Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard.

Dams and society - the problems of resettlement - Published as Chapter 2 of The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams: Volume 1. Overview. Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1984. By Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard.

The super-informed society or "Many paths to nonsense: information theory applied to the living world". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 12 No. 3, May / June 1982. Information theory may be useful for modern communication but is it relevant to the world of living things?

Ethnocracy: the lesson from Africa - this controversial article sets out the roots of Africa's continuing wars, strife and poverty as the outcome of the colonial powers' creation of artificial borders that defy ethnic and religious boundaries. Now frozen in the modern nations of Africa, these boundaries combined with the tribalisation of politics have created a mess from which it will be near impossible for Africa to emerge. But the federal system of Germany and the Cantons of Switzerland offer a model for a more peaceful and secure future. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 4, April / May 1980.

Genetic engineering - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, January / February 1979, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "It has always been a major plank of those who support genetic engineering that today's laboratory techniques are so sophisticated that the risks of an accident involving recombinant DNA are now almost infinitesimal ... "

Why we only accept a policy if we know it will not work - published in The Ecologist Quarterly, winter 1978. "How to fly people to the moon and bring them back again is a technological problem. We have indeed solved it and this is a very remarkable achievement. But it is irrelevant. It solves none of the problems that confront our society today any more than does the development of the microprocessor ... "

The family basis of social structure - the family in its various forms is the universal basis of all human societies. However the modern family has so weakened that society has become "simply a mass of socially unrelated individuals among whom a semblance of order, however superficial, can only be maintained by means of increasingly powerful external or asystemic controls: bureaucracies, dictators ... ". This version was published as Chapter 2 of "The Stable Society" by Edward Goldsmith, The Wadebridge Press 1978. It was originally published in two parts in The Ecologist, Vol. 1 No. 1 and Vol. 1 No. 2, 1976.

The future of an affluent society - the case of Canada - Part Three - this article examines in depth how even Canada, a vast country blessed with abundant resources and with a realtively small population, is far from immune to the problems arising from industrialism and its associated social and economic disruption. It was published in The Ecologist vol. 7 no. 5, June 1977.

The future of an affluent society - the case of Canada - Part Two - this article examines in depth how even Canada, a vast country blessed with abundant resources and with a realtively small population, is far from immune to the problems arising from industrialism and its associated social and economic disruption. It was published in The Ecologist vol. 7 no. 5, June 1977.

The future of an affluent society - the case of Canada - Part One - this article examines in depth how even Canada, a vast country blessed with abundant resources and with a realtively small population, is far from immune to the problems arising from industrialism and its associated social and economic disruption. It was published in The Ecologist vol. 7 no. 5, June 1977.

De-industrialising society - five years after A Blueprint for Survival, Edward Goldsmith updates and reaffirms the original message, that we must create "an economically and politically de-centralised post-industrial society". The article was originally published in The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 4, May 1977. This slightly revised version was published as Chapter 7 of The Great U-Turn.

The two Ecologies - published in The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 10, December 1975. Edward Goldsmith predicts the rise of a radical 'ecological' subculture that "rejects the industrial world because of its mediocrity, its ugliness, its unnaturalness and its hypocrisy - in fact because it fails to satisfy basic social, aesthetic and spiritual needs". Intrinsic to this movement will be a rethinking of the 'scientific' method that pervades the modern world view, and the false science of 'ecology'.

A stateman of world importance - Edward Goldsmith shows how Indira Gandhi has betrayed the Gandhiism of the Mahatma in pursuing India's industrialisation and urbanisation, and most recently in imprisoning J P Narayan, political leader of the Sarvodaya Movement. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 7, August / September 1975.

The fall of the Roman empire - in this powerful essay, Edward Goldsmith concludes that internal moral and political decay and unsustainable agriculture underlie the fall of the Roman Empire, while the Barbarian invasions were merely the coup de grace. The comparisons with our own society and misguided sense of permanence are unsettling. It was published as Chapter 1 of The Great U-Turn, also published in The Ecologist, July 1975, and Le Sauvage (France), April 1976.

Heads you win, tails I lose! - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 6, June 1975. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "After some serious thought on the global shortage of food, Drs. Reed and Tolley have come up with an undeniably original suggestion, that we put human faeces on the menu. Faeces are, apparently, 'not unpalatable after homogenisation followed by steam sterilisation, oven drying and finally, cooking.' ... "

How to live in cloud cuckoo land and justify it - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 8, August 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Researchers have made the amazing discovery that there is plastic waste in the sea. Since in the UK alone we consume 1.5 million tons of plastic a year, and since our principal method of getting rid of all waste products is to dump them into the sea, one would not have expected this discovery to have caused quite so much astonishment ... "

The ecology of unemployment (original version) - A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). As industry becomes ever more capital-intensive, mass unemployment becomes inevitable - unless we reverse the direction of 'development'.

Pollution by tourism - one of the first-ever critiques of mass tourism, revealing its many under-estimated impacts. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

The ecology of unemployment (extended version) - This short essay explains how the industrial system we live under not only creates unemployment, but created the very idea of unemployment. It was first published in The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974, then in Everyman's of February 9 1975 (India). This revised version later appeared in 1988 as Chapter 3 of The Great U-Turn.

Adam and Eve revisited - In this article Edward Goldsmith spells out the principles which he believes govern the behaviour of social systems, and which none - including industrial society - can violate with impunity. These principles indicate that primitive man is the only one who is actually living a sound and completely ordered existence.

Better pick the edelweiss - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 8, August 1973. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The balance of payments is excellent, the standard of living is high, therefore everything must be fine and our prospects excellent ... homelessness, delinquency and general demoralisation - is of little interest "

You can′t get there from here - Edward Goldsmith reviews the Planning and Management of Human Settlements for Environmental Quality report. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 6 June 1972.

The social structure of the environment - Published in the "Towards a unified science" column, The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 3 March 1972.

A Blueprint for Survival was published in January 1972, occupying all of The Ecologist Vol. 2 No.1, in advance of the world's first ever Environment Summit in Stockholm. So great was demand for the Blueprint that its was subsequently republished in paperback by Penguin books. It was written by Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen and others.

We are all addicts - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 18, December 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "I once saw a film of a European doctor teaching Samoans how to brush their teeth. Particularly striking was the fact that their teeth were white and shiny, while his were black ... "

The disintegration of pre-Islamic society in North Arabia - The decline of the many municipal religions of the city-states of North Arabia created the opening for the establishment of Islam as the national religion of the Arab people. Published in the "Towards a unified science" column, The Ecologist, Vol. 1 No. 18, December 1971.

The vessel without a pilot - A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 14, August 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Unfortunately control mechanisms can occasionally break down, and this is what has happened in our society. It is increasingly out of control, and can be likened to a vessel without a pilot, whose course is determined by the random play of winds and currents ... "

We can't have our cake and eat it - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 13, July 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). " When, in time of drought, a tribal rainmaker fails to bring about the required rain, the tribesmen, sadly surveying their parched fields and ailing crops, do not question the efficacy of the magical rites that they performed in vain. Age-old tradition has conferred on the rainmakers a respectability that no individual failures can possibly impair ... "

Social disorganisation and its causes - Edward Goldsmith examimes the underlying causes of social breakdown, drawing from examples across the sweep of history. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 13, July 1971.

Social disintegration: effects - Chapter 21 of the book Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist.

Social disintegration: causes - This is Chapter 20 of the book Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist.

Limits of growth in natural systems - Chapter 3 of the book Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist.

Can Britain Survive? Introduction - this is the introduction to the book Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist.

What of Britain′s future? - this prescient article was originally published as the concluding chapter of Can Britain Survive?, published by Tom Stacey, London, 1971, and Sphere Books, London, 1971 (paperback). The book is a selection of articles from The Ecologist, together with original papers and articles from other periodicals, collected and edited by Edward Goldsmith while Editor of The Ecologist. The article was reprinted two years later in The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 11, November 1973, with the following introductory paragraphs.

The prostitute society - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 6, December 1970, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "By insulting our rivers, desecrating our cities, degrading our countryside, killing off our wildlife, endangering our health with pollutants and helping to exterminate two million of our fellows, we have doubtless made quite a bit of money. What are we going to do with it? ... "

The stable society - can we achieve it? - a sustainable society can only be stable - but how is our structurally unstable, indeed chaotic society and economy to make the transition? Published in The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 6, 1970.

Living with nature - editorial in the first ever issue of The Ecologist Vol.1 No. 1, July 1970.