Dr. David Fleming (1940 – 2010) was a visionary thinker and writer
who played significant roles in the genesis of the UK Green Party,
the Transition Towns movement, and the New Economics Foundation, as
well as chairing the Soil Association. He was also one of the early
whistle-blowers on oil depletion and designer of the influential
TEQs carbon/energy rationing system. He read Modern History at
Trinity College, Oxford, and later earned an MBA and then an MSc
and PhD in economics (in 1988). These enabled him to better engage
with and confound the mainstream, in support of his true passion
and genius: understanding that diverse and mysterious thing
“community.” Lean Logic was the work of over thirty years.
Shaun Chamberlin has been involved with the Transition Network
since its inception, co-founding Transition Town Kingston and
authoring the movement’s second book, The Transition Timeline.
He was also one of Extinction Rebellion’s first arrestees, chair of
the Ecological Land Co-operative, and has spoken at venues ranging
from Occupy camps to national parliaments. In exploring the
cultural narratives charting society’s course he has written and
edited diverse publications, including bringing his late mentor
David Fleming's lifework Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the
Future and How to Survive It to posthumous publication, and
creating from it the paperback Surviving the Future: Culture,
Carnival, and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. He is
also a consulting scholar at Sterling College, and lead writer of
the film The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled
Civilisation? His website is www.darkoptimism.org.
Rob Hopkins is the cofounder of Transition Network and Transition
Town Totnes. He is the author of several books, including The
Transition Handbook and, most recently, From What Is to What If:
Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want.
An Ashoka Fellow, Hopkins has spoken at TED Global and several TEDx
events, and he appeared in the French film phenomenon Demain. He
holds a PhD from the University of Plymouth, as well as 2 honoris
causas. Hopkins is a director of Totnes Community Development
Society, and he runs ‘Imagination Catalyst’ trainings for a wide
range of organisations, including Balenciaga and Patagonia. He
hosted the podcast From What If to What Next and has collaborated
with musician Mr Kit on a music project called Field Recordings
from the Future, due out in 2025. In November 2022, he was made an
Honorary Citizen of Liège, Belgium, by the mayor of the city. His
website is robhopkins.net.
“I would unreservedly go so far as to say that David Fleming was
one of the most original, brilliant, urgently-needed, underrated,
and ahead-of-his-time thinkers of the last 50 years. History will
come to place him alongside Schumacher, Berry, Seymour, Cobbett,
and those other brilliant souls who could not just imagine a more
resilient world but who could paint a picture of it in such vivid
colours. Step into the world of David Fleming; you'll be so glad
you did.”--Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the Transition Network
“Each time I encountered David Fleming, he left behind something
whose value I was a little too slow to recognise. A sketch for
Tradable Energy Quotas. A critique of the nuclear fuel cycle. And
clearest in my memory: a slim working paper entitled The Lean
Economy. It took me nearly a decade to respond properly to its
call. In Surviving the Future, Fleming has left behind his greatest
gift: a remarkable clarity of vision—a way of seeing the world not
just for what it is, but for what it might be. Hopefully, this time
I’m ready for it.”--Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable
Development, University of Surrey; author of Prosperity without
Growth
“David Fleming was an iconoclast in a time when orthodox thinking
reasserted suffocating control. When many major environmental
voices had, in effect, decided to 'go with the flow', accept the
mainstream economy, and do their best to make it greener, David
Fleming went the other way. His analysis told him that nothing
short of a paradigm shift could ensure our collective survival, and
he said so, loudly, without fear of being marginalised. His courage
in saying unpopular things is clear in these writings, and we
should all thank him. Without the uncompromising clarity
of David's writing, we would delude ourselves as to
the scale and the immediacy with which we must reshape the economy
and our lifestyles. Thank goodness his analysis can now be shared
more widely.”--Andrew Simms, codirector, New Weather Institute;
fellow, New Economics Foundation; author of Cancel the
Apocalypse
“David Fleming was an elder of the UK green movement and a key
figure in the early Green Party. Drawing on the heritage of
Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Fleming’s beautifully written and
nourishing vision of a post-growth economics grounded in
human-scale culture and community—rather than big finance—is both
inspiring and ever more topical.”--Caroline Lucas MP, former
leader, Green Party of England and Wales; former Member of the
European Parliament
“David Fleming predicts environmental catastrophe but also proposes
a solution that stems from the real motives of people and not from
some comprehensive political agenda. He writes lucidly and
eloquently of the moral and spiritual qualities on which we might
draw in our ‘descent’ to a Lean Economy. His highly poetic
description of these qualities is neither gloomy nor self-deceived
but tranquil and inspiring. All environmental activists should read
him and learn to think in his cultivated and nuanced way.”--Roger
Scruton, writer and philosopher; author of over thirty books,
including Green Philosophy
“Why do some of the truly great books only emerge and exact their
influence upon us after the death of their authors? Perhaps it
takes a lifetime to accrue and refine the necessary wisdom. Or
perhaps it simply takes the rest of us too long to catch up. Like
Thoreau, Fleming's masterpiece brims not only with fresh insight
into every nook and cranny of our culture and what it means to be
human, but with such wit and humour that its challenging ideas and
radical perspectives become a refreshing delight. If we’re to have
a future worth surviving, this book demands to be read, re-read,
and—ultimately—acted upon.”--Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless
Manifesto and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi
“Shaun Chamberlin has edited Fleming’s Lean Logic to a string of
gems that refract the burning issues of our times.”--Professor
Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Poacher’s
Pilgrimage
“‘The end is nigh’ messages are a dime a dozen these days.
Fleming’s work doesn’t shy away from that, but it’s his vision of
what could come next—and the potential richness, carnival, and
culture of it—that I think is so rare and precious in these books.
Less what we stand to lose and more what we've lost already and
stand to regain if we do things right.”--Jeremy Leggett, founder,
Solarcentury and SolarAid; author of The Winning of the Carbon
War
“I can’t say enough good things about this book. David Fleming’s
keen interdisciplinary mind was at home in economics, history, and
anthropology, so when he imagines the world beyond fossil fuels,
the result is not just a schematic diagram but narrative with bone,
sinew, flesh, and blood. This is how real human beings could and
hopefully will respond to climate change and resource
depletion.”--Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, Post Carbon
Institute
“David Fleming has laid out a logical, persuasive, and very
readable pathway to dealing with the most crucial catastrophe we
face: the double bind of growth—if no growth the economy fails, if
growth the economy fails. He illuminates the
‘transition from the global city’ to ‘habitats on a human
scale’ and an economy ‘organized around the rediscovery of
community.’ If there will be any survival following the coming
collapse, it will be through following the wisdom provided
here.”--Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale
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