Towards Sustainable Future, circa 1972

Tired of doom and gloom? Well, who isn't. Want an outline of what can be done? Of course you do. Thirty-six years ago A Blueprint for Survival was published 1972 in "The Ecologist", then later in book form by Penguin. Written by Edward Goldsmith, editor of "The Ecologist" and Robert Allen, it paints a predicament, not unlike the one we face now, and, more importantly, proposes a strategy to deal with it. I loved it when I first read it, so I did what I always do with great books - insist that my friends read them, hence, my library suffers - Thank God for the internet! For I have now rediscovered this marvelous little text, conveniently archived!

To give you a flavour of the book itself, and perhaps tempt you to read it for yourselves here is the first paragraph from the introduction:

The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born today is inevitable-unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mankind. We can be certain, however, that sooner or later it will end (only the precise time and circumstances are in doubt), and that it will do so in one of two ways: either against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social crises and wars; or because we want it to-because we wish to create a society which will not impose hardship and cruelty upon our children-in a succession of thoughtful, humane and measured changes. We believe that a growing number of people are aware of this choice, and are more interested in our proposals for creating a sustainable society than in yet another recitation of the reasons why this should be done. We will therefore consider these reasons only briefly, reserving a fuller analysis for the four appendices which follow the Blueprint proper.

This book, written over thirty years ago, raised an alarm that has largely been ignored. Within its first pages is a likely reason why - the demand for environmental resources grows exponentially but, by the time it is actually noticed, it may be too late to change. They quote a Professor Forrestor who says,

"Exponential growth is treacherous and misleading. A system variable can continue through many doubling intervals without seeming to reach significant size. But then in one or two more doubling periods, still following the same law of exponential growth, it suddenly seems to become overwhelming."

Let's hope that it isn't too late for us to turn the tide, and perhaps this little book will provide some answers as to how it can be done.