''A Blueprint for Survival'' was an influential environmentalist text that drew attention to the urgency and magnitude of environmental problems.
First published as a special edition of ''
The Ecologist
''The Ecologist'' is a British environmental journal, then magazine, that was published from 1970 to 2009. Founded by Edward Goldsmith, it addressed a wide range of environmental subjects and promoted an ecological systems thinking approach thr ...
'' in January 1972, it was later published in book form and went on to sell over 750,000 copies.
The ''Blueprint'' was signed by over thirty of the leading scientists of the day—including
Sir Julian Huxley,
Sir Frank Fraser Darling,
Sir Peter Medawar,
E. J. Mishan and
Sir Peter Scott
Sir Peter Markham Scott, (14 September 1909 – 29 August 1989) was a British ornithologist, conservationist, painter, naval officer, broadcaster and sportsman. The only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, he took an interest in ...
. It was largely written by
Edward Goldsmith
Edward René David Goldsmith (8 November 1928 – 21 August 2009), widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher.
He was a member the prominent Goldsmith family. The eldest son of Major F ...
and
Robert Allen (with contributions from John Davoll and Sam Lawrence of the
Conservation Society, and Michael Allaby) who argued for a radically restructured society in order to prevent what the authors referred to as ''“the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet”''.
It recommended that people live in small, decentralised and largely de-industrialised communities. Some of the reasons given for this were that:
* it is too difficult to enforce moral behaviour in a large community
* agricultural and business practices are more likely to be ecologically sound in smaller communities
* people feel more fulfilled in smaller communities
* reducing an area's population reduces the environmental impact
The authors used
tribal societies
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confli ...
as their model which, it was claimed, were characterised by their small, human-scale communities, low-impact technologies, successful population controls, sustainable resource management, holistic and ecologically integrated worldviews, and a high degree of social cohesion, physical health, psychological well-being and spiritual fulfilment of their members.
[The Way: an ecological worldview by Edward Goldsmith, University of Georgia Press, 1998.]
In popular culture
In ''
Enys Men'', a 2022 British experimental horror film set in 1973, a wildlife volunteer making daily observations of rare flowers on an uninhabited Cornish island is frequently shown reading ''A Blueprint for Survival''. The book cover includes a quote from the Sunday Times stating that "nothing seems quite the same any more", which nods to the film's ambiguous narrative and chronology.
See also
*
Limits to Growth
''The Limits to Growth'' (''LTG'') is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential economic and population growth with finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer model to simula ...
*
Transition Towns
The terms transition town, transition initiative and transition model refer to grassroot community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instabilitythrough r ...
References
External links
''A Blueprint for Survival''—full text
1972 non-fiction books
Environmental non-fiction books
Sustainability books
1972 in the environment
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