Global climate

Our climate - the key question - introductory address to the 'San Rossore - A New Global Vision' Climate Congress. This event was organised by Claudio Martini, President of the Tuscan Region, and took place at San Rossore, Pisa, Tuscany, Italy, 15-16 July 2004.

What can we do about global warming? - this talk was broadcast at various dates during December 2003 on the World Business Report programme of the BBC World Service, as part of a series of six talks by Edward Goldsmith.

How to feed people under a regime of climate change - Modern agriculture is not only highly vulnerable to climate change, it is also a major cause of climate change due to its emissions of greenhouse gases and its damaging effects on soil and freshwater resources. A combination of traditional agricultural knowledge and techniques, combined with newly emerging sustainable technologies, may hold the answers we need. Published in World Affairs Journal, winter 2003. Reprinted in Surviving the Century - facing climate chaos and other global challenges, edited by Herbert Girardet (Earthscan, May 2007).

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 ... "

Rethinking basic assumptions - an article for the Parliamentary Monitor. The 'New Labour' government led by Tony Blair is not just a disappointment from an ecological perspective, it is the worst government that Britain has ever had: assiduous in its efforts to please multinational corporations, ever seeking to promote dangerous and untested new technologies, utterly subservient to power, and despite its superficial green rhetoric, always happy sacrifice the environment in pursuit of its political, economic and military objectives.

What to do? - chapter from La terre vue du ciel (the Earth seen from the Sky) by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Paris, 3 September 2002). "Ultimately the answer ... is to change the industrial system itself and return to a largely rural, community-based society in which economic activities are conducted on a very much smaller scale and that cater as much as possible for the local economy."

A question of survival - why the fight against climate change should take precedence over all other priorities. Published in The Ecologist Special Report on climate change, November 2001.

The fight must go on - Goldsmith looks back to the Blueprint for Survival, published in 1972, and finds that the core messages have only become more relevant and pressing with the passing of time. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 30 No. 5, July / August 2000.

The next thirty years - writing at the turn of the Millennium, Edward Goldsmith predicts that hard times are ahead, failing drastic action to curb the social and environmental evils that beset us.

Profits of doom - Steven Ferry interviews Edward Goldsmith for Government Technology Magazine, May 1999. "Built into the global economy are the seeds of its own disintegration. But the biggest problem we face today, which dwarfs all others, is global warming ... The only thing which may save us is the complete collapse of the global economy, with all the problems that that will create. The choice is between two horrors."

The economic cost of climate change - "Industrialists who continue to lobby governments to prevent them from taking the necessary action to combat climate change try to persuade themselves that inaction is in the best interests of their businesses and the economy itself. Given the enormous financial costs climate change will inflict, such an attitude is short-sighted in the extreme ... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 29 No. 2, March / April 1999.

The Crash Programme: a solution-multiplier - "The crash programme required to restabilise global climate can be funded by mobilising funds that are either currently wasted or used in destructive ways. The real cost for humanity is negative since the programme has to be undertaken in any case to solve nearly all the other critical problems that confront us today ... " Published in The Ecologist Vol. 29 No. 2, March / April 1999.

Global warming will make traditional climatic knowledge irrelevant. Tribal peoples have an unparallelled understanding of their environment, which is key to the sustainable agriculture and lifestyles which they have pursued for generations. But with climate change, weather patterns and ecosystems face disruption. Could traditional tribal knowledge, of such huge potential value for sustainable living, be made obsolete by global warming?

Technology - a false religion - a review of Why things bite back by Edward Tenner. "Edward Tenner's book is truly blasphemous. Its thesis is that our technological efforts to manage the world of living things are not working out too well. At first they may seem magically successful, but then comes what Tenner calls their 'revenge effect', which at best transforms acute problems into chronic ones, at worst gives rise to all sorts of new problems, often more serious than whatever problem was targeted in the first place ... ". Published in The Ecologist Vol. 28 No. 5, September / October 1998.

Policing the environment - a talk presented to the Bellerive / Globe "Policing the Global Economy - why, how and for whom?" international conference, held in Geneva 23-25 March 1998, before Sadruddin Aga Khan. "My thesis is that there are no effective institutional methods for 'policing the global environment'. To the extent that the global environment will be 'policed' at all it is only likely to be by mass social movements ... "

A question of climate - a review of Climate and Development, edited by Asit K Biswas, Natural Resources and the Environment Series. An agronomical analysis of why tropical countries cannot follow the agro-industrial model of the developed North. Published in The Ecologist Vol. 14 No. 5/6, 1984.

The Reykjavik Conference on the Environmental Future - a group of eminent scientists whose specialised work has led them to consider different aspects of the environmental crisis met at Reykjavik. This account of their meeting, and the uncompromising conclusions they reached, was published in The Ecologist Vol. 7 No. 6, July 1977.