![]() Greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 42 per cent since the 90s due to the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation, according to the ONS. Four of the five organisations ( Friends of the Earth, The Soil Association, Survival International and The Henry Doubleday Research Foundation, now called Garden Organic) that formed the original coalition are still active. We may be tackling the same problems, but progress has been made. ‘However, we believe that if a strategy for survival is to have any chance of success, the solutions must be formulated not from a timorous and superficial understanding of what may or may not be immediately feasible.’īut we are learning, if slowly. ‘We are sufficiently aware of “political reality” to appreciate that many of the proposals we will make in the next chapter will be considered impracticable,’ they wrote. And the writers recognised a transformation would not come overnight. When the Ecologist published its controversial call for change 40 years ago, people had only just begun to examine global warming and consider the perils of climate change. ‘Were confidence to fall, stock values would crash, drastically reducing the availability of capital for investment and hence further growth, which would lead to further unemployment.’ After all, with unemployment at 8.4 per cent, the UK is in the exact unsavoury economic position the ‘Blueprint’ predicted if confidence in the stock market were to plummet. Today it would be easy to suggest that nothing has changed, that we continue to fight a losing battle when it comes to sustainability and economic stability. ‘Radical change is both necessary and inevitable because the present increases in human numbers and per capita consumption, by disrupting ecosystems and depleting resources, are undermining the very foundations of survival,’ wrote Ecologist founder Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen and a team of colleagues, who named self-sufficient smaller communities, like those of native societies, as a model for sustainable living.Īs part of a strategy for the future this forward-thinking team outlined ‘The Movement for Survival,’ which would be spearheaded by ‘a coalition of organisations concerned with environmental issues.’ This movement would eventually lead to the formation of the Green Party. Published prior to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm, the ‘Blueprint’ issue was so popular it reportedly sold about 500,000 copies, and was later published in book format. A radical and influential issue, it was both a catalyst for political change and an eerily accurate outline of global issues we still face today. ![]() 'Blueprint for Survival’ is so timely it reads as though it was plucked from a modern-day newsstand.
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