Lectures & speeches

Our climate - the key question - introductory address to the 'San Rossore - A New Global Vision' Climate Congress. This event was organised by Claudio Martini, President of the Tuscan Region, and took place at San Rossore, Pisa, Tuscany, Italy, 15-16 July 2004.

Rewriting economics - "Let us see why modern economics produces such a distorted view of our relationship with the real world in which we live. The main reason is that modern economics has been developed in total isolation from the disciplines that seek to understand the living world ... ". A short lecture delivered to the LSE's Environmental Initiatives Network, subsequently printed in their Journal, February 2003.

Rediscovering economics - talk given to the London School of Economics, 30 January 2002. " ... where once the whole economy was based on social relationships, as economic growth proceeds, these social relationships are replaced by economic relationships and as each one of these functions is usurped by corporations the community just disintegrates, it loses its raison d'etre. Eventually you end up with an atomised mass society such as we have today ... ".

Policing the environment - a talk presented to the Bellerive / Globe "Policing the Global Economy - why, how and for whom?" international conference, held in Geneva 23-25 March 1998, before Sadruddin Aga Khan. "My thesis is that there are no effective institutional methods for 'policing the global environment'. To the extent that the global environment will be 'policed' at all it is only likely to be by mass social movements ... "

The cosmic covenant - a talk to the Religion & Environment Education Programme (REEP) Conference for Bishops & Theologians on 2 February 1998, also published in Fourth World Review in the same year. "Man is naturally a religious being. It is not religion as Karl Marx insisted, but materialism that is the opiate of the people. What is more, religion is even today a powerful force and could be very much more so if it were seen by the public at large as providing the very basis of the world view with which we must all be imbued if we are to survive on this beleaguered planet ... "

A strategy for ensuring the habitability of our planet - a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, London, demonstrating that the interests of the economy, and those of society and the environment, are fundamentally incompatable.

Free Trade and GATT - this talk was delivered at the India International Centre on 13 December 1991 as part of a series of lectures and meetings organised by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage in 1991-1992. It was then published by INTACH in Towards Hope - an ecological approach to the future by Vandana Shiva, Jeremy Seabrook, Gunther Hilliges, Upendra Baxi, Edward Goldsmith and Paul Ekins, in December 1992, as part of its "Studies in ecology and sustainable development" series. "When you allow the market to decide our fate, you are actually saying that economic considerations must decide our fate. Then there is nothing to stop us from destroying our planet. It is happening very, very quickly indeed. In my opinion, the only hope we have if we were going to keep this planet more or less habitable is to do precisely the opposite - to make sure our economic activities are ruthlessly and systematically subordinated to social, ecological and climatic considerations. I do not think we have any alternative to doing this."

On receiving the 1991 Honorary Right Livelihood Award - In 1991 Edward Goldsmith received a Honorary Right Livelihood Award, "... For his uncompromising critique of industrialism and promotion of environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives to it". This is the speech that he gave on receiving the Award.

Gaia: some implications for theoretical ecology - paper for the Wadebridge Ecological Centre's Conference: "Gaia: Theory, practice and implications", Camelford, Cornwall, October 1987. It was also published in The Ecologist Vol. 18 No. 2/3, 1988.

The logic of reorientation - This article is condensed from a paper by Edward Goldsmith which appeared in Teach-In for Survival, published by Robinson & Watkins Books, London, in 1972. It was published in the journal Manas Volume XXVI Number 41, 10 October 1973. The Teach-In is made up of the talks by the participants in a 'Teach-In' at Queen Elizabeth College, London.