Edward Goldsmith: curriculum vitae

Early years

Born: 8 November 1928, Paris, France. British father: Frank B. H. Goldsmith, O.B.E., T.D., ex M.P. for the Stowmarket Division of Suffolk 1910 - 1918, later Chairman of the Societé des Hotels Réunis in Paris, France. French mother: née Marcelle Mouiller.

Nationality: Dual, British and French.

Education: Millfield School, Street, Somerset.
Magdalen College, Oxford (1947-50). Read Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) BA (Hons) 1950.
MA Hons - Politics, Philosophy and Economics; 1970 or thereabouts.

National Service (1953-1955): Second Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps. Spent six months as second in command of 902 Field Security Section in Hamburg, and a year on the Allied Staff in Berlin.

Career

Career summary: Tried my hand at business in Paris (1957-1966) working with my father, then my brother, then on my own, running a company making and distributing electronic components (not very successfully). Devoted most of my spare time to the study of the subjects that still preoccupy me. I gave up business and moved to the UK in 1967 on the death of my father, who left me some money that enabled me to devote myself to my studies full-time. I have continued with my studies, written and edited books, written papers in various journals and articles for magazines, organized meetings, campaigned against destructive development projects, involved myself in Green politics, lectured, broadcasted, etc. in the UK and elsewhere, which I still do today.

Principal Occupation: Publisher, editor, author, lecturer and campaigner.

Other positions: President of the Climate Initiatives Fund, Richmond, UK.
Board member of the International Forum on Globalization, San Francisco, USA.

The Ecologist: Founder of The Ecologist, 1969, of which local versions are also published in Brazil, France, India, Italy, New Zealand and Spain, together with associated books and reports.
Publisher of The Ecologist, from 1969.
Editor of The Ecologist from 1969 to 1990, and again from 1997-1998.
From 1998, Editor of special issues of The Ecologist.

Books

Please see the list of books by Edward Goldsmith on this website.

Chronology

1968	Was member of the committee that founded the Primitive Peoples' Fund, now called Survival International, and whose Chairman remains Robin Hanbury Tenison of Cardinham, Cornwall.
1969	Founded The Ecologist which I edited until 1987 and still publish today. The editorial office is now at Sturminster Newton in Dorset.
1971	Founded the Ecological Foundation and commissioned a Private Commission on Transport chaired by the Bishop of Kingston, subsequently the Biship of Birmingham. Served as environmental advisor to the Foundation.
1972	As editor of The Ecologist, did special issue criticising the preliminary papers prepared for the First United Nations Conference on the Envionnment in Stockholm. My colleagues and attended the meeting and, with Friends of the Earth, USA, published a daily paper for the official delegates - The Stockholm Conference ECO.
1973	Moved to Cornwall, where I remained for 17 years. Founded the Wadebridge Ecological Centre. The Ecologist was published and edited in Cornwall from 1973 to 1987.
1973 - 1977	Toured Alsace during most local, regional and national elections, campaigning for Ecologie et Survie, which, at a national level, became the French Green Party, staying with the candidates, canvassing with them, and speaking at public meetings.
1973 - 1977	Consultant to Atlanta 2000, a citizens group looking at the future of their city.
1974	One of the founders of "Cornwall Nuclear Alarm", set up to prevent the dumping of nuclear waste in Cornwall. In conjunction with Mebyon Kernow several hundred (perhaps more) of us went to London, congregated in Trafalgar Square and demonstrated against this hideous plan. Speakers included the Bishop of Birmingham, Robin Cook MP, Diana Rigg, the actress, and myself. Stood for the Eye Constituency in Suffolk - part of which was once in the Stowmarket Division (my father's constituency from 1910 - 1918) for the Parliamentary election, representing "People", a party that became the Ecology Party and later the Green Party. Worked for 4 months with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi, comparing the Gandhian (Sarvodaya) movement with the Ecology movement in Europe.
1975	One of the founders of ECOROPA, a European ecological club and think-tank, serving as vice-president and president of the French branch. Worked for 3 months at Environment Canada's Advanced Concepts Centre in Ottawa. Wrote a report on the future of Canada which was later published as a special issue of The Ecologist.
1977	Was one of the organizers of a local movement to stop the building of a nuclear reactor at Luxulyan in Cornwall. We occupied the site for six months, the different villages in the area taking it in turn to provide people to garrison the site every night. Stood for Wadebridge at the Cornwall County Council Elections. Got 27% of the votes. Co-organizer of a conference in Atlanta, Georgia (at the Georgia Technical Institute) on the Future of America. Did special issue of The Ecologist on the subject for the participants.
1978	Stood for Cornwall and Plymouth for the Green Party at the European Elections, got 5,500 votes.
1980 -	Lecturer at Schumacher College, Totnes, co-organizer of periodic meetings at Worthyvale Manor, Camelford on the implications of the Gaia Thesis, usually with the participation of Professor James Lovelock, who lives at Launceston, and co-organizer of three-week courses at Worthyvale Manor for students on the "International Honors Program". Trustee of the South West Rivers Trust, Falmouth. Principal adviser to the Ecological Foundation at Withiel, Bodmin.
1977	Was a witness at the Windscale Inquiry on BNFL's plan to build THORP to reprocess high level radioactive waste from second generation nuclear power plants.
1977 - 1979	Co-organizer of a series of meetings for Ecoropa on Ecology and Economics, one in Wadebridge, one at St Hippolyte du Fort in the Cevennes and one at the University of Kassel.
1978	Lecture tour of New England. One of the founders of the Green Alliance - a Parliamentary Lobbying Group on the environment (together with Gordon Rattray Taylor, Gerard Morgan Grenville and Maurice Ash of the Dartington Trust in Totnes.
1980	Subject of Doctoral Thesis for the Facolta Di Magistero, Corso di Laurea in Sociologia, University of Rome: La Sociologia Ecologica di Edward Goldsmith, by Gianfranco de Santis.
1982	Set up and funded the "Commission for the Study of the Economics of Nuclear Electricity (CSENE) under the chairmanship of Sir Kelvin Spenser, who was once chief scientist at what was then the Ministry of Power. Meetings were held at Exeter University. My colleague Peter Bunyard, of Lawellen Farm, Withiel, Bodmin, Cornwall, was the convenor and main author of the report that it published (as a special issue of The Ecologist). It was presented to Parliament by Lord Strathcona (Conservative) and Tony Benn (Labour). Little interest - though events have shown that our calculations were correct.
1984	With my colleagues, started a campaign against the World Bank, which we accused of "financing the destruction of our planet". Did two special issues of The Ecologist on the subject that was circulated to decision-makers in different countries.
1986	Was a witness at Tribunal which tried the World Bank for crimes against humanity in Berlin - an event that coincided with that institution's annual general meeting.
1986	Involved with The Ecologist and Ecoropa in collecting three million signatures asking for an emergency meeting of the security Council on global deforestation. Together with twenty other people, mainly Third World activists, we took the signatures in wheelbarrows to the UN in New. York, where we occupied the main lobby until Mr Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary General, agreed to meet us and discuss this issue with us. Organised a meeting two days later between us and a group of senators headed by Al Gore in the US Senate, where we asked for the US to stop funding the World Bank.
1990	Organised with my colleagues a campaign against the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) which we accused of much of the responsibility for malnutrition and famine in the Third World. Published special issue of The Ecologist on the subject which was published in book form in Italian. Together with Ecoropa members invaded an FAO conference on Agriculture and the Environment in the Netherlands, distributed our literature, held press conference in building opposite. Helped organize similar action at the FAO Forestry meeting in Paris later that year.
1991	Formation of the Goldsmith Foundation by my brother, Sir James Goldsmith, with which I have been involved ever since. This took up nearly half my time for some years.
1992	Helped start, with funding from the Goldsmith Foundation, an alliance between small farmers, organic growers, environmental groups, animal welfare groups and consumer groups in the UK (SAFE Alliance) in France (Alliance Paysans, Consommateurs, Ecologistes). There are now similar alliances in most West European countries.
1993	Toured the USA for six weeks promoting my book The Way: an Ecological World View, and visiting foundations with environmental interests in order to see if they would work with the Goldsmith Foundation in funding important environmental projects.
1991	Subject of television film on Channel 4 - Edward Goldsmith - Green Revolutionary. Produced and directed by Nicholas Claxton for Goldhawk Films. Shown twice.
2003	December, presented a series of four Radio talks on the BBC World Service World Business Report.

Awards

• Honorary Right Livelihood Award (known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) 1991 (Stockholm).
• Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, 1991.
• Best Book of the Year Award for Ecological and Transformational Politics, awarded by the American Political Science Association, for The Case Against the Global Economy: and for a turn towards the local, co-edited with Jerry Mander, 1997.

University Courses and Lectures

Courses

1975	University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.	I was Adjunct Associate Professor - sponsored by Mental Health Institute, Residential College and Humanities Department of Engineering Department, Michigan University.
1978	Exeter University, UK.	I was engaged by Students' Union to give a course of some ten lectures.
1983	Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois.	I was engaged to give a month's course on Environmental Science.
1984	University of Illinois, Springfield, Illinois.
1990	International Honors Program, in conjunction with Boston University.	Set up a Global Ecology Course with which I am still working.
1989 - 1994	International Honors Program in conjunction with Bard College, New York State.	Engaged to set up an annual year's round-the-world course in Global Ecology. Got together a team of people in different countries (UK, Spain, India, Thailand, New Zealand, Mexico and USA). The students are almost all from American universities, and the year's programme counts towards their degrees.

Lectures

1969	Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, USA.	Traditional Religion.
1970	New Hampshire, USA.	Ecology.
1971	American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), USA.	General Systems
1972	Michigan, USA.	Cybernetics.
1973	Michigan, USA.	Open Meeting.
1973	Wellesley, USA.	Open Meeting.
1973	Yale, USA.	Forestry
1973	Austrian Cybernetics Society, UK.	Cybernetics.
1974 - 1978	Gandhi Peace Foundation, India.	Ecological Issues.
1974	International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, UK.	Philosophy of Science.
1975	Michigan State, USA.	Open Meeting.
1975	International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, USA.	Social Issues.
1975	Concordia, Canada	Open Meeting.
1975	Toronto, Canada.	Open Meeting.
1975	Ottawa, Canada.	Economics.
1978	Ottawa, Canada.	Geography.
1978	Queens (Belfast), UK.	Open Meeting.
1978	Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts, USA.	Open Meeting.
1978	Williams, USA.	Open Meeting.
1978	Smith, USA.	Open Meeting.
1979	Society for International Development, Italy.	Development.
1979	The Other Economic Summit, France.	Economics.
1980	Pomona College, USA.	Environmental Science.
1980-1990	Auckland, New Zealand.	Environmental Science
1985	Sussex, UK.	Development Studies
1990	Edinburgh, UK.	Human Ecology.
1991	Auckland, New Zealand.	Psychology
1993	Auckland, New Zealand.	Architecture
1993	Berkeley USA.	Geography, Environmental Resources.
1993	Glamorgan UK.	Social Science.
1993	Harvard, USA.	Faculty Club.
1993	Institute of Noetic Sciences, USA.	My book: The Way: an Ecological World View.
1993	Lancaster, UK.	Environmental Ethics.
1993	Lincoln USA.	Environmental Science
1993	New Hampshire, USA.	Business Studies.
1993	Pomona College, USA.	Theology.
1993	The Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, UK.	The Local Economy.
1994	Schweisfurth Foundation, Germany.	The Globalisation of the Economy.
1993	The World Bank.	Development Aid.