24 Facts About Edward Goldsmith

Edward Goldsmith was the founding editor and publisher of The Ecologist.

Edward Goldsmith co-authored the influential A Blueprint for Survival with Robert Allen, becoming a founding member of the political party "People", itself largely inspired by the Blueprint.

Edward Goldsmith was born in Paris in 1928 to a German Jewish father, Frank Edward Goldsmith, and French mother, Marcelle Mouiller.

Edward Goldsmith concluded 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.

In London, at meetings of the Primitive People's Fund, Edward Goldsmith teamed up with the fund's treasurer Robert Prescott-Allen, the explorer Jean Liedloff, and a writer from World Medicine, Peter Bunyard, to found The Ecologist in 1969.

Early on, Edward Goldsmith had formulated a concept of the biosphere as an integrated cybernetic entity, the self-regulating parts co-operating, largely unconsciously, for the mutual benefit of the whole, a view that anticipated aspects of the Gaia thesis, of which he was to become a leading proponent.

Edward Goldsmith claimed that it is a reductionist theory and that if you understand evolution, it is necessary to "abandon the reductionistic and mechanistic paradigm of science".

The Blueprint was a major inspiration for the embryonic political party called "People" which invited Edward Goldsmith to stand for the Eye constituency in Suffolk as their candidate in the February 1974 general election.

The campaign focused on the threat of desertification from the intensive farming practised in the area, which Edward Goldsmith emphasised with the help of a Bactrian camel supplied by Aspinall.

Edward 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.

Edward Goldsmith lost his deposit, but his unorthodox campaign succeeded in attracting the media's attention and highlighted the issues.

Edward Goldsmith again stood for the now-renamed Ecology Party at the European elections in 1979, now winning a more respectable portion of the vote.

In 1977, when the Central Electricity Generating Board threatened to site a nuclear reactor on farmland in Luxulyan, Cornwall, Edward Goldsmith was among those who organised a continuous sit-in of the land, with local people blocking the entrance and staffing round-the-clock garrisons to prevent CEGB contractors from starting their drilling work.

In 1974, Edward Goldsmith spent four months with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi, comparing the Gandhian movement with the Ecology movement in Europe.

In 1984, together with his colleague Nicholas Hildyard, Edward Goldsmith authored a multi-volume report on the destructive effects of large-scale, hydroelectric dams.

In 1989, Edward Goldsmith helped to organise an international campaign calling for an immediate end to the destruction of the world's remaining forests with its detrimental effects on indigenous cultures, biodiversity and global climate.

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

Edward Goldsmith continued to attend key meetings around the world and involved himself with a variety of campaign organisations by becoming President of the Climate Initiatives Fund, Richmond, London; a board member of the International Forum on Globalization, San Francisco, USA; a founder member of Marunui Conservation Ltd.

In 1997, after a political split with the editorial team of The Ecologist, Edward Goldsmith was left to run the magazine on his own.

Edward Goldsmith was accused of having affiliated himself with the Nouvelle Droite, an intellectual voice of the European "New Right", after addressing a symposium on Green issues organised in Paris by the GRECE, a school of political thought founded largely on the works of Alain de Benoist.

Later, in a controversial article for the Guardian newspaper, entitled "Black Shirts in Green Trousers", George Monbiot accused Edward Goldsmith of having "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".

Still, Edward Goldsmith received affectionate support and respect from across the full spectrum of the environmental movement and from many of the people whose views and preoccupations were the focus of his theoretical and philosophical critique.

Edward Goldsmith's message continued to be sponsored around the world, in particular through his work with the International Forum on Globalization.

Edward Goldsmith had a brother, James Goldsmith, through whom he is the uncle of Zac Goldsmith, Jemima Khan and Ben Goldsmith.