The Doomsday Funbook

The Doomsday Funbook - Introduction. The Doomsday Funbookis Edward Goldsmith's most recent book, a collection of editorials from The Ecologist illustrated by the incomparable Richard Willson. Published by Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006. Order the book from this page and get free P&P.

The Doomsday Funbook - cover - This is the cover of the book The Doomsday Funbook, edited by Edward Goldsmith, a compendium of articles from The Ecologist by Goldsmith and other authors, with cartoons by the incomparable Richard Willson. It was published byJon Carpenter Publishing in February 2006.

For the oil industry, human survival is just not economic - an article by Edward Goldsmith and Simon Retallack for the Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006); written in March 1997, and updated on 22 November 2002. "International attempts to control climate change have been a primary target for corporate lobbyists. Their aim throughout has been to delay, damage and, if at all possible, destroy the rather feeble measures that have been proposed. Perhaps the most damaging response has come from oil industry chiefs like Lee Raymond, President of Exxon-Mobil ... "

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).

Unhygienic? Or just small scale? - an article for The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006), written in June 2001. "Throughout the world today governments, in accordance with WTO legislation, are imposing costly installations on small food producers on the premise that their activities are not hygienic, which few can afford and which thereby pushes many of them out of business", yet "it is the big intensive food producers, not the small ones, that are responsible for the epidemic of food poisoning and, probably, for the growing incidence of other diseases as well."

Did God really do such a bad job? - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, May / June 1998. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Underlying the world view of the secular Religion of Progress is the fundamental assumption that the world is badly designed. God did a bad job, and it is incumbent on man, armed as he is with all his science, technology, industry and free trade, to transform it in accordance with his vastly superior design ... "

Why not, we've got a licence? - A leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 3, May 1998. Revised in January & February 2000, and republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

Cynicism, food and power - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 26 No. 6, November / December 1996, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "As the peasant movement Via Campesina has pointed out, 'Food Sovereignty can only be achieved through solidarity and the political will to implement alternatives.' Acting together to create such political will offers the best hope of ensuring that the 400 million people written off by the World Food Summit do not starve. "

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 "

Changing values (edited version) - From the introduction to Green Britain or Industrial Wasteland by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard (Polity Press, February 1988). Written in 1986, republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The loss of nature's benefits is not considered a cost. It does not appear to have occurred to economists that if our activities interfere too radically with the workings of nature, then nature might no longer be capable of providing the benefits we now take for granted and upon which our very survival depends ... "

Misleading the public - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 16, 1986, by Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Today, much of the information supplied by government and industry on key environmental issues is designed to rationalize current practices and policies. To that end, numerous public statements have been made which can only be described as downright lies ... "

The retreat from Stockholm - editorial article published in The Ecologist Vol. 12 No. 3 May / June 1982. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). Goldsmith muses on the progress of UNEP and concludes: "It is difficult to avoid agreeing with Sir Frank Fraser Darling that 'we are all doomed'."

The scapegoat principle - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 10 No. 3, March 1980, by The Editors. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

The importance of being average - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 9 No. 8/9, November / December 1979. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). To calculate average exposures to pollutants, and average susceptibilities to their ill-effects, is all very well. Except that "Mr. Average does not exist. He is but a figment of the statistician's imagination."

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 ... "

The hammer-bashing society - an allegory of the futility of industrialism. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 8 No. 4, July / August 1978. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

Planning for starvation - Editorial article, The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 2, March 1977. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

Value judgements - can they be scientific? - leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 6 No. 2, February 1976. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

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.' ... "

The test tube fixation - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 1, January 1975. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

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 suntan diversion - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 6, June 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "Scientific research has just revealed that battery eggs are as good as free range ones. Measurements published in Nature have shown that they only differ in their vitamin B12 content. Any difference in taste, we are assured, is without scientific basis and must therefore be purely imaginary. This is a perfect illustration of both 'The Lamp Post Lark' and 'The Suntan Diversion' - associated variants of the same basic fallacy ... "

The caviar chimera - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 3, March 1974. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

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).

You've never had It so good - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 11, November 1973. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "We have all been taught since our most tender childhood that science, technology and industry are enabling us to create a materialist paradise on Earth from which the basic human problems of poverty, unemployment, disease, ignorance, war and famine will have been eliminated once and for all. It is increasingly evident, however, that this is not happening ... "

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 "

What is need? - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 3 No. 1, January 1973. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "One thing is certain: industrialisation creates needs faster than it satisfies them ... "

The priesthood of industrial society - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 10, October 1972. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "if a proposition is classified as 'scientific', then it must be true, indeed incontestable; if on the other hand it is branded as 'unscientific', then it must be the work of a charlatan. This has provided the Scientific Priesthood with the power to prevent any undesired deviation from scientific orthodoxy, just as the Catholic establishment of the Middle Ages could excommunicate ... "

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 sanctity of life - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 15, November 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "We have been taught since childhood to fear anything connected with death and decay. A corpse fills us with horror, while the scavengers that eat it and the bugs and bacteria that decompose it are among the most despised of creatures. Yet death and decay are as essential as life and growth - one would not be possible without the other ... "

So far, so good - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 16, October 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The experts assure us that current levels of lead in our air and water are safe. Scientific endeavour, it would appear, is something that confers on a proposition some measure of credibility - perhaps even downright certainty. If so, how is this achieved? ... "

Chickenowski's chicken - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 15, September 1971. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006).

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 ... "

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? ... "

Is pesticide science based on false assumptions? - a leading article for The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 5, November 1970. Republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). "The scientist is under attack. His image is deteriorating fast. No more do we see a benevolent sage whose infinite wisdom is leading to man's conquest of nature, to the elimination of disease, poverty, misery and everything else that afflicts us. Instead, to more and more, he has become an ogre who, to satisfy his own curiosity, is concocting vile poisons that are bound to get us all in the end ... "