Edward Goldsmith

For other people named Goldsmith, see Goldsmith (disambiguation).

Edward Goldsmith
Born	(1928-11-08)November 8, 1928 Paris, France
Died	August 21, 2009(2009-08-21) (aged 80) Siena, Italy
Occupation(s)	Environmentalist, Philosopher
Website	http://www.edwardgoldsmith.org/

Edward René David Goldsmith (born November 8, 1928 in Paris, France; died August 21, 2009 near Siena, Italy) was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher.

The eldest son of Major Frank Goldsmith, and elder brother of the financier Sir James Goldsmith, Edward Goldsmith was the founding editor and publisher of The Ecologist.

Well known for his outspoken views opposing industrial society and economic development, he articulated a deep sympathy for the ways and values of traditional peoples.

He co-authored the influential Blueprint for Survival with Robert Prescott-Allen, becoming a founding member of the political party "People" (later renamed The Green Party), itself largely inspired by the Blueprint. Goldsmith's conservative view of environmentalism put him at odds with the more liberal currents of thought that came to dominate the British Green Party.

A deep ecologist and systems theorist, Goldsmith was an early proponent of the Gaia thesis, having previously developed a similar cybernetic concept of a self-regulating biosphere.

A talented after-dinner speaker and raconteur, Goldsmith was an articulate spokesman and campaigner, receiving a number of awards for his work protecting the natural environment and highlighting the importance and plight of indigenous peoples, including an honorary Right Livelihood Award and the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.

Early life

Edward Goldsmith (widely known as Teddy) was born in Paris in 1928 to an Anglo-Jewish father, Frank Goldsmith, and French mother, Marcelle Mouiller. [1]

He entered Millfield School, Somerset as a crammer student, and later graduated with honours in Politics, and Philosophy, Economics (PPE) at Magdalen College, Oxford (1947-1950). [2]

While studying at Oxford, Goldsmith strongly rejected the reductionist and compartmentalised ideas taught at the time, and began to seek out a more holistic worldview with which to study societies and the problems facing the world at large. [3]

After serving his National Service as a British Intelligence Officer in Hamburg and Berlin, Goldsmith involved himself, unsuccessfully, in a number of business ventures, while devoting most of his spare time to the study of subjects which were to preoccupy him for the rest of his life. [4]

Throughout the 1960s he spent time travelling with his close friend John Aspinall witnessing firsthand the destruction of traditional societies, concluding that the spread of economic development, and its accompanying industrialisation, far from being progressive as claimed, was actually the root cause of social and environmental destruction. [5] [6] [7]

The Primitive People’s Fund

In London, at meetings of the Primitive People’s Fund (later to be renamed Survival International), Goldsmith teamed up with the fund’s treasurer Robert Allen, the explorer Jean Liedloff, and a writer from World Medicine, Peter Bunyard, who together founded The Ecologist in 1969. [8] [9]

Theory of Unified Science

After rejecting the narrow reductionist approach of mainstream academia, Goldsmith spent much of his time researching and developing his own theories for the unification of the sciences. [10]

The Theory of Unified Science was heavily influenced by cybernetics, as well as the General Systems Theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the holism of the early academic ecologists, and the functionalism employed by many anthropologists at the time. [11] His grand theory would later be published, in its final form, as The Way: an ecological world view. (see below)

Early on, Goldsmith had formulated a concept of the biosphere as an integrated cybernetic entity, the self-regulating parts (of which he included tribal societies) cooperating, largely unconsciously, for the mutual benefit of the whole [12]—a view which anticipated aspects of the Gaia thesis, of which he was to become a leading proponent. [13]

The Ecologist

Having established The Ecologist in 1969 with founding editors Robert Allen, Jean Leidloff, and Peter Bunyard, [14] Goldsmith was to use the journal as a platform for his theoretical concerns with regular articles appearing under the heading Towards a Unified Science. The journal also became an important forum for the early Green movement, with articles focusing on the relevance and survival of hunter-gatherer societies, alternative technology, organic farming, in addition to prescient articles concerning climate change, [15] [16] resource depletion, nuclear accidents, accompanying the usual gamut of issues surrounding pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, soil erosion, corporate power, large dams, and the World Bank's alleged role in "financing the destruction of our planet". [17] [18] [19]

A Blueprint For Survival

Signed by over thirty of the leading scientists of the day—including Sir Julian Huxely, Sir Frank Fraser Darling, Sir Peter Medawar, Sir Peter Scott, and C. H. Waddington—Goldsmith and his fellow editor Robert Allen made headlines in January 1972 with A Blueprint for Survival.

The Blueprint was a far reaching proposal for a radical transition to a largely de-centralised and de-industrialised society—an attempt to prevent what the authors referred to as “the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet”. [20] It became a key text for the early Green movement, selling over half a million copies, translated into 16 different languages. [21] In some ways it anticipated many of the concerns taken-up today by the Transition Movement.

Goldsmith and Allen argued that rather than devise imaginary utopias, as did Marxist and liberal political theorists of the time, they should instead look to the example of existing tribal peoples, where the authors claimed there existed a real-life working model of societies perfectly adapted to their long term survival needs and the needs of the living world on which they depended. These tribal peoples alone, the authors argued, had demonstrated a viable means by which the most pressing problems facing humanity could be successfully answered. [22] [23]

Such societies were characterised by their small, human-scale communities, low-impact technologies, successful population controls, sustainable resource management, holistic and ecologically integrated worldviews, and a high degree of social cohesion, physical health, psychological well-being and spiritual fulfilment of their members. [24] [25] [26]

The People Party

The Blueprint was a major inspiration for the embryonic polical party called "People" (later to become the Green Party [27]), which invited Goldsmith to stand for the Eye constituency in Suffolk as their candidate in the March 1974 General Election.

The campaign focused on the threat of desertification from the intensive farming practised in the area, which Goldsmith emphasised with the help of a Bactrian camel supplied by his close friend John Aspinall. Goldsmith was in turn accompanied by bearded supporters dressed in the garb of Arab sheiks—the implication being that if modern oil-intensive farming practises were allowed to continue the camel would be the only viable means of transport left in Suffolk. As intended, the campaign attracted a lot of media attention, and not surprisingly Goldsmith lost his deposit. [28]

He again stood for the (now renamed) Ecology Party at the European Elections in 1979, this time winning a slightly more respectable portion of the vote. [29]

Cornwall

In 1973, buoyed by the success of the Blueprint and a sudden rise in public awareness of ecological issues—brought about partly by the Stockholm Conference and the publication of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth in the same year—Goldsmith and his editorial team moved from their offices in London to relocate to rural Cornwall in the far west of England. [30] Here Goldsmith and his colleagues bought themselves farms, and for the following seventeen years attempted to form a small-scale, relatively self-sufficient community of their own, while The Ecologist continued to be produced on-site between their other chores. [31] [32]

Later, in 1977 when British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) threatened to site a nuclear reactor at a disused tin mine in Luxulyan, Cornwall, Goldsmith organised a continuous sit-in of the land, with local people blocking the entrance and manning round-the-clock garrisons to prevent BNFL contractors from commencing their drilling work. [33] An early example of an effective environmental protest camp, the High Court eventually awarded in favour of BNFL allowing the drilling to go ahead. BNFL never went on to develop the site however.

The Gandhi Peace Foundation

In 1974, Goldsmith spent four months with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi, comparing the Gandhian (Sarvodaya) movement with the Ecology movement in Europe. [34] [35] This led Goldsmith to forge close links with Indian environmental activists, in particular with the Chipko movement—including Sunderlal Bahuguna and Vandana Shiva. This was to have a major influence on Goldsmith's approach to environmental activism, and led to a special issue of The Ecologist on the subject. [36] [37]

The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams

In 1984, together with his colleague Nicholas Hildyard, Goldsmith authored a monumental report on the destructive effects of large-scale, hydroelectric dams. This was the beginning of a long drawn-out attack directed at the IMF and World Bank which Goldsmith and his colleagues accused of financing the destruction of the planet. [38]

In one episode, Goldsmith wrote an open letter to the then President of the World Bank, Alden Clausen, demanding that the bank “stop financing the destruction of the tropical world, the devastation of its remaining forests, the extermination of its wildlife and the impoverishment and starvation of its human inhabitants”. [39] At the time, the connection between large-scale development projects and social and environmental destruction had not been widely recognised within the environmental movement.

The Goldsmith Foundation

In 1991, with the financial support of his brother Sir James, Goldsmith established the Goldsmith (JMG) Foundation supporting a diverse range of non-governmental organisations campaigning against environmentally destructive activities, along with organisations providing sustainable alternatives. [40]

The Way

In 1990, urged on by Arne Næss, [41] Goldsmith left the editorship of The Ecologist to Nicholas Hildyard, while taking time off to write his philosophical magnum opus The Way: an ecological worldview. [42] The Way was the culmination and synthesis of more than four decades [43] of theoretical development, embodying a "coherent worldview" by which Goldsmith would attempt to explain the self-inflicted problems facing the world and to propose a way out of them. Much of this work was already mature in Goldsmith's mind by the time he published the first issues of The Ecologist in 1970. [44] [45]

Controversies

In 1997, after an acrimonious split with his editorial team—most notably with his formally close friend and colleague Nicholas Hildyard [46]—Goldsmith was left to pick up the pieces and run The Ecologist by himself. Having been absent for some years, he brought in the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) to act as the editorial team. His nephew Zac, who was then working for ISEC, eventually took over the editorship on their behalf. [47]

The split with Hildyard led to a period of often bitter criticism from some members of the political left of the environmental movement, [48] [49] [50] which, compounded with failing health, [51] resulted in a period of isolation from the British environmental movement. Despite this, Goldsmith's message continued to be sponsored around the world, in particular through his work with the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG). (Goldsmith and Hildyard were later able to reconcile their friendship).

His close association with his brother Sir James Goldsmith, his lifelong friendship with the controversial casino owner and conservationist John Aspinall both of him had very extreme right wing poltical views, and his anti-modernist views and support for indigenous peoples, ensured that Goldsmith had many detractors throughout his life. Yet despite this, Goldsmith enjoyed affectionate support and respect from across the full spectrum of the environmental movement, as well as from many of the people whose views and preoccupations were the focus of his theoretical and philosophical critique. [52]

Goldsmith's variant of environmentalism has put him at odds with the current left-wing British Green Party but has won him support among members of the Conservative Old Right. In November 27th 1994, he was invited to address a symposium on Green issues, organised in Paris by the GRECE (Research and Study Group on European Culture), a school of political thought founded largely on the works of Alain de Benoist. The title of his contribution was "une société écologique : la seule alternative" (an ecological society: the only alternative). He advocated the enforced separation of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, on the grounds that they constitute “distinct ethnic groups” and are thus culturally incapable of co-habitation. These opinions were revealed by George Monbiot on his website under the title "Black Shirts in Green Trousers", an exposure of far right elements within the Green movement.

Later life

In addition to the UK Ecologist, Goldsmith later helped to found and support The Ecologist as independent enterprises in many parts of the world—Brazil (in Portuguese), France, Asia (India), Italy, Greece (in Greek), the Pacific (New Zealand), Lebanon (in Arabic), Latin America (in Spanish), and Columbia (in Spanish). [53]

He also became President of the Climate Initiatives Fund, Richmond, UK, [54] a board member of the International Forum on Globalization, San Francisco, USA, [55] a Founder member of Marunui Conservation Ltd., Mangawhai, New Zealand (1987), [56] and a Founder member and vice-president of ECOROPA, a European ecological club and think-tank (1975).[57]

Philosophy

• Holism

• Human scale

• Perennial Philosophy

• neotribalism

• Gandhi

Personal life

• First wife, née Gillian Marion Pretty—two daughters and a son

• Second wife, née Katherine Victoria James—two sons

• Sir James Goldsmith (brother)

• Clio Shand (daughter)

• Zac Goldsmith (nephew)

• Jemima Kahn (niece)

• Ben Goldsmith (nephew)

• Mark Shand (son-in-law)

• Carlo Alessandro Puri Negri (former son-in-law)

• Peter Whitehead (former son-in-law)

Awards

• EMCI, Natura Uomo Ambiente, 8th Symposio Ecologico International, Napoli 1979

• Honorary Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”) 1991 Stockholm

• Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, 1991 (French knighthood)

• Premios Internacionales Vida Sana (Spanish organic association), 1991

• Best Book of the Year Award for Ecological and Transformational Politics, awarded by the American Political Science Association, for The Case Against the Global Economy: and for a turn towards the local, co-edited with Jerry Mander, 1997

• Council for International Affairs and Human Rights (Shiva statue)

• Gandhi Millennium Award, 2001

• International Forum on Globalization, Lifetime Achievement Award, Feb 24, 2007

Influences

• tribal peoples

• Ludwig von Bertalanffy

• Alfred North Whitehead

• Karl Polanyi

• Michael Polanyi

• Gandhi

• Eugene Odum

• C. H. Waddington

• Paul Alfred Weiss

• W H Thorpe

• Placide Tempels

• Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

• Roy Rappaport

• Richard St. Barbe Baker

Associates

• John Aspinall

• Jerry Mander

• Helena Norberg-Hodge

• Vandana Shiva

• Mae-Wan Ho

• John Papworth

• Eugene Odum

• Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

• Richard Willson

• Lawrence Hills

• Richard St. Barbe Baker

• James Lovelock

• The Prince of Wales

Bibliography

Author

• The Stable Society (Wadebridge Press, 1978).

• The Great U-Turn: De-industrialising Society (Green Books, 1988).

• The Way: an ecological world view (Rider 1992; Revised Edition, Green Books 1996).

Co-author

• A Blueprint for Survival (Penguin, 1972)

• The Doomsday Funbook (Joys Of Apocalypse) 1977

• The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams (Wadebridge Ecological Centre):

Volume I (1984)

Volume II (1986)

Volume III (1992)

• 5,000 Days to Save the Planet. (Hamlyn, 1990)

• The Doomsday Fun Book New Edition. (John Carpenter, 2006)

Editor

• Can Britain Survive? (Part author. Tom Stacey, 1971).

• La Médecine à la Question (Fernand Nathar, France 1981).

• The Earth Report (Mitchell Beazley, 1988).

• Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanisms and the Implications (Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1988).

• Gaia and Evolution (Co-editor with Peter Bunyard. 1990).

• The Case Against the Global Economy: and for a turn towards the local (Co-editor with Jerry Mander. Sierra Book Club, 1996).

• Le Piège se Referme (The trap snaps shut again) (France 2001).

Selected Essays

• My answer

• The fall of the Roman Empire

• The family basis of social structure

• How to feed people under a regime of climate change

• Can the environment survive the global economy?

• Development and colonialism

• The myth of flood control

• Art and ethics

• Religion at the Millenium

See also

• Blueprint for Survival

• The Ecologist

• Gaia Theory

• Holism

• International Society for Ecology and Culture

• International Forum on Globalization

References

1. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [1]
2. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [2]
3. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [3]
4. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [4]
5. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. p228-9
6. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [5]
7. Uncle Teddy by Fred Pearce, 1991 [6]
8. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. p228-9
9. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [7]
10. The Stable Society by Edward Goldsmith. The Wadebridge Press, 1978. p iv
11. The Way: an ecological worldview by Edward Goldsmith, University of Georgia Press, 1998. Introduction
12. A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist Vol. 2, No. 1. Appendix A. [8]
13. Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanisms and the Implications, edited by Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith. Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1988.
14. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. p228-9
15. The Ecologist Vol. 1 No. 1
16. The Ecologist Vol. 2 No. 1
17. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [9]
18. The Ecologist Vol.1, Nos 1-18.
19. Can Britain Survive? Edited by Edward Goldsmith. Tom Stacey, 1971
20. A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist Vol. 2, No. 1. Preface
21. Edward Goldsmith—the Green Revolutionary. Goldhawk Films, 1990
22. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. p229-30
23. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [10]
24. A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist Vol. 2, No. 1.
25. The Stable Society by Edward Goldsmith. The Wadebridge Press, 1978.
26. The Way: an ecological worldview by Edward Goldsmith, University of Georgia Press, 1998.
27. A short history of the Green Party of England and Wales by Derek Wall, 1993. [11]
28. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [12]
29. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [13]
30. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. p239
31. The Daily Telegraph Obituary: Edward Goldsmith [14]
32. The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [15]
33. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [16]
34. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [17]
35. Edward Goldsmith—the Green Revolutionary. Goldhawk Films, 1990
36. Edward Goldsmith—the Green Revolutionary. Goldhawk Films, 1990
37. The Ecologist Vol. 5 No. 8
38. The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams by Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard. Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1984.
39. The Times Obituary: Edward Goldsmith [18]
40. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [19]
41. The Way: an ecological worldview by Edward Goldsmith, University of Georgia Press, 1998. Introduction
42. "The Ecologist Magazine 1970-2007: a case study" Master's thesis Kristen Harding. University of Plymouth, September 2007
43. The Way: an ecological worldview by Edward Goldsmith, University of Georgia Press, 1998. Introduction
44. Towards a Unified Science. The Ecologist Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol. 3
45. A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist Vol. 2, No. 1. Appendices A & B. [20]
46. "The Ecologist Magazine 1970-2007: a case study" Master's thesis Kristen Harding. University of Plymouth, September 2007
47. "The Ecologist Magazine 1970-2007: a case study" Master's thesis Kristen Harding. University of Plymouth, September 2007
48. "Blood" and "Culture" by Nicholas Hildyard [21]
49. Black Shirts in Green Trousers by George Monbiot [22]
50. My Answer by Edward Goldsmith [23]
51. The eco gardeners from Tuscany by Caroline Donald [24]
52. The Daily Telegraph Obituary: Edward Goldsmith [25]
53. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [26]
54. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [27]
55. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [28]
56. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [29]
57. Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae [30]

Additional references

Further reading

• Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain by Meredith Veldman. Cambridge University Press, 1994. [31]

• The Godfather of Green by Paul Kingsnorth [32]

• The Way: an ecological worldview [33]

• www.edwardgoldmith.org [34]

External Links

• edwardgoldsmith.org (archived work)

• The Green Revolutionary (1990 documentary film)

• New Lamps for Old (1992 interview with Satish Kumar)

• The Ecologist (online archives)