Whisper it gently, but things are definitely stirring at that august, old stalwart of the green movement ñ Bristol’s Schumacher Lectures, now in their 25th year. For, while the greybeards are still strongly in evidence, this year saw a positive invasion of youth, both on the platform and on the floor
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John Joplin (right) is presented the 2002 Schumacher Award by Satish Kumar. ©

It seemed as if, apart from the venerable Herbie Giradet, Chairman of the Schumacher Society, the platform was a completely wrinkle-free zone. One suspects that the collective age of the three speakers ñ Zac Goldsmith, Caroline Lucas and Pooran Desai ñ was little greater than that of many speakers to have previously taken to the podium. And the excitement and energy they brought to the event was contagious. The main speaker sessions and the afternoon workshops fairly sparkled with an alert and excited concentration. Zac Goldsmith, editor of the Ecologist magazine, was first up. Launching a theme that was taken up by both Caroline and Pooran, he ridiculed the Orwellian language used to prop up and defend the excesses of neo-liberal, global capitalism. He pointed out that the sinking of the Exxon Valdez (and other similar environmental disasters) contribute to a growth in our gross domestic product (GDP), paraded by our economists as the prime measure of quality of life. Nor was free trade’ remotely free, he said, protecting as it does the rich, while increasing the vulnerability of the poor.

As for the supposed inevitability’ of economic globalisation, both Zac and Caroline after him, explained carefully and cogently that this hugely wasteful and destructive way of providing for our needs is a creation of human decisions that is quite capable of being reversed. And why the word protection’ denoting such positive and nurturing con-notations in every other area of life, should have acquired such a bleak reputation in the field of economics was a puzzle indeed. The power of words ñ and the importance of scraping off and exposing tired and compromised ways of using them.

In answer to the question he was addressing in his talk, Can We Create a Local World?’, Zac answered emphatically in the affirmative. The urgent need, he said, is to expose and oppose the dominant role of corporations in setting the policy agenda and to create an economy and a society that is geared to meeting the needs of communities rather than those of big business.

The baton passed to Caroline Lucas who, as a Green Party Member of the European Parliament, sees at first hand the power of the corporate lobby in influencing decision-making in Brussels. Addressing the theme of A Europe of Local Economies’, she described many of the regressive trends currently in train: the increasing power of the European Central Bank and the correspondingly diminishing powers of local economies to set interest rates to suit their own circumstances; the growing power of EU-based corporations in Eastern Europe as they position themselves to exploit the economic opportunities that will follow on from enlargement; and the might of the European Round Table of Industrialists in determining the EU’s policy agenda.

And yet, she said, there are also real grounds for hope ñ those green shoots just keep on sprouting! Local authorities and citizens groups are active through the European community in safeguarding and protecting their communities ñ finding ways of directing local government procurement contracts to local companies; linking farmers up to local schools and hospitals; pressurising governments to make it necessary for all local authorities to draw up plans for sustainability. Moreover, she said, the EU is a large enough body ñ probably the only one in the world with sufficient resources and potential will power ñ to stand up to the power of the corporations and rein them in. Political will’, she said, is the key. We need to pressure our representatives to support the people and communities of Europe by standing up to corporate power’.

Pooran Desai, co-founder and director of BioRegional Solutions was next up, addressing the theme Living on One Planet’. He began by citing research undertaken in the emerging discipline of ecological footprinting that were everyone on the earth to live as Americans currently do, we would need six planets to satisfy our needs. (A note of caution is perhaps in order here for we Europeans with our all-too-comfortable habit of haughty condescension towards our North American cousins: if everyone were to live like us, we would need around four and a half planets.) Technofix is clearly part of the solution’, he said, but will the scientists really be able to create five additional planets?’

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