Teddy Goldsmith Dies at 80. By Bruce Weber, NYTimes, September 5, 2009. "Edward Goldsmith, an implacable critic of industrialism... founded The Ecologist to elevate environmental consciousness at a time when there was not much, and... helped father a British political party, now known as the Green Party, that was among the world's first to make environmental policy its priority... Mr. Goldsmith, known as Teddy, died Aug. 21... He was 80... Mr. Goldsmith was something of a utopian, something of a polemicist and, not surprisingly, something of a polarizing figure as well. In his campaign against society's relentless urge to modernize, he argued for self-sustaining, environmentally conscious communities and against the presumption that economic and technological developments were beneficent engines of progress... Perhaps his most influential work, written with a handful of others in 1972, was A Blueprint for Survival, a manifesto that declared that life on earth would be unsustainable if civilization remained on its industrialized path.
"Mr. Goldsmith was renowned for his stubbornness and charisma. Though a radical environmentalist, he was defiantly independent in his politics. He infuriated his left-leaning colleagues with his hostility to science and technology, his willingness to engage the right wing in environmental policy discussions and his sometimes reactionary social views... Even his detractors, however, recognized the prescience of The Ecologist and the important role Mr. Goldsmith played in ratcheting up awareness of climate change, deforestation, the potential dangers of nuclear power plants and the sustainability of life on the planet."
No comments:
Post a Comment