Audience and speakers excited that conditions may finally be right for the ideas of the green economist to become reality
German-born economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (1911-1977).
Photograph: David Montgomery/Getty Images
"The most exciting time to be alive" is not a phrase that trips off the tongue of many politicians currently grappling with a global debt crisis and the threat of recession, but it was almost a mantra at the centenary festival for the economist and "soul of the green movement", E F Schumacher.
The great and the good of the movement, including activists, academics and even a few bankers, turned up at the weekend event in Bristol to pay homage to the author of Small is Beautiful, the landmark 1973 environmental text that questioned the drive for relentless GDP expansion.
With many economies now flat or in decline, the financial system in crisis and the climate increasingly erratic, the crowds that gathered in Colston Hall had come not just to celebrate the life of Schumacher but to bask in the possibility that conditions may finally be ripe for his ideas to be implemented.
"The current economic model is broken and no one is clear about how to fix it. I think that makes Schumacher's ideas more resonant," said Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party. "It's time to shift towards an economy that isn't based on an accumulation of stuff."
The timing of this festival of alternative thinking could not have been more apposite. The day before the opening, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, announced £75bn of quantitative easing to tackle what he described as "the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s if not ever." Next year, world leaders will gather at a United Nations conference in Brazil to try to map out the path to a "green economy".
"This 100-year anniversary is an opportunity to expose the fallacy of the economic system. Schumacher is becoming more influential because of the crisis," said Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence, in an opening address. He later told the Guardian: "Schumacher was the soul of the green movement. He realised the environment is not just an empirical, technical, policy matter; it is related to human values, which are a part of natural values."
Tim Jackson, a senior adviser on the Sustainable Development Commission under the last government, said this was the most exciting time to be alive because the potential for radical change had never been greater.
Jackson said the global financial system was now near the point of collapse due to the obsession with growth, which he described as a "fetish for enormous proportions". Schumacher, he said, prefigured the current anxiety about selfish, novelty-seeking consumerism that encouraged people to "spend money they don't have on things they don't need to create impression that won't last on people they don't care about."
Schumacher was born in Germany and became a naturalised British citizen after catching the attention of John Maynard Keynes. He was heavily influenced by Leopold Kohr who coined the "small is beautiful" dictum, and Mahatma Gandhi, who underscored the importance of a spiritual dimension to economics. Schumacher called his approach "Buddhist economics", though joked it might just as easily have been "Christian economics, but that wouldn't have sold as well."
Though he met Jimmy Carter and other world leaders in the 1970s, his ideas went out of vogue during the Thatcher-Reagan years. But today, it is once again fashionable to quote Schumacher. David Cameron cites him as an inspiration for the "big society" and his promise to lead "the greenest government ever". There was short shrift for such claims among the society's true believers, one of whom noted that "politicians and bankers have managed to achieve zero growth only by mistake".
The mood of imminence and possibility was very different from that at the annual conventions of the main UK political parties, which were marked by poor turn-outs and lacklustre speeches. Schumacher Society organisers said this year's gathering drew more than twice as many people than a usual year, filling the 800-seat venue.
The speakers - not linked by formal affiliation but by the shared influence of Schumacher - were not short of big ideas.
Lawyer Polly Higgins called for the United Nations to add "ecocide" to its list of "crimes against peace"; Rob Hopkins, the founder of Transition, described a localisation drive to prepare for the peak of oil, and green financier Peter Blom of Triodos Bank, proposed a shake-up of business school teaching and greater "biomimicry" in the financial sector to strengthen a system that has come to resemble a fragile monoculture.
"We've seen some new things today: a green lawyer, a green politician and a green banker," said Diane Schumacher. "If there was any three groups of people that Fritz [Schumacher] suspected, it was them. He'd be delighted by the revolutionary stuff coming out of their mouths."
Some in the audience said Schumacher's heirs were too idealistic, too white, too middle-class. This has been a common refrain for 30 years, but there was also a feeling that, given the current crisis, even such proposals may be too timid.
Bill McKibben, the US climate activist, struck the most assertive note, with a video message explaining why he pulled out of the festival at the last minute so he could join the fight against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would take oil from Canada's tar sands down to the Gulf of Mexico.
McKibben was arrested earlier this year while challenging this pipeline, but he said it was necessary to continue with direct action against the fossil fuel industry because "the worst thing that ever happened to the world is now happening".
The tar sands, he said, contained enough oil to raise the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere from the current 393 parts per million (ppm) level to 530ppm, which would warm the world by about 1C.
"I look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with you in the most important fight humans have ever fought," he said, in a sign-off that met with some of the loudest applause of the weekend.
The great and the good of the movement, including activists, academics and even a few bankers, turned up at the weekend event in Bristol to pay homage to the author of Small is Beautiful, the landmark 1973 environmental text that questioned the drive for relentless GDP expansion.
With many economies now flat or in decline, the financial system in crisis and the climate increasingly erratic, the crowds that gathered in Colston Hall had come not just to celebrate the life of Schumacher but to bask in the possibility that conditions may finally be ripe for his ideas to be implemented.
"The current economic model is broken and no one is clear about how to fix it. I think that makes Schumacher's ideas more resonant," said Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party. "It's time to shift towards an economy that isn't based on an accumulation of stuff."
The timing of this festival of alternative thinking could not have been more apposite. The day before the opening, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, announced £75bn of quantitative easing to tackle what he described as "the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s if not ever." Next year, world leaders will gather at a United Nations conference in Brazil to try to map out the path to a "green economy".
"This 100-year anniversary is an opportunity to expose the fallacy of the economic system. Schumacher is becoming more influential because of the crisis," said Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence, in an opening address. He later told the Guardian: "Schumacher was the soul of the green movement. He realised the environment is not just an empirical, technical, policy matter; it is related to human values, which are a part of natural values."
Tim Jackson, a senior adviser on the Sustainable Development Commission under the last government, said this was the most exciting time to be alive because the potential for radical change had never been greater.
Jackson said the global financial system was now near the point of collapse due to the obsession with growth, which he described as a "fetish for enormous proportions". Schumacher, he said, prefigured the current anxiety about selfish, novelty-seeking consumerism that encouraged people to "spend money they don't have on things they don't need to create impression that won't last on people they don't care about."
Schumacher was born in Germany and became a naturalised British citizen after catching the attention of John Maynard Keynes. He was heavily influenced by Leopold Kohr who coined the "small is beautiful" dictum, and Mahatma Gandhi, who underscored the importance of a spiritual dimension to economics. Schumacher called his approach "Buddhist economics", though joked it might just as easily have been "Christian economics, but that wouldn't have sold as well."
Though he met Jimmy Carter and other world leaders in the 1970s, his ideas went out of vogue during the Thatcher-Reagan years. But today, it is once again fashionable to quote Schumacher. David Cameron cites him as an inspiration for the "big society" and his promise to lead "the greenest government ever". There was short shrift for such claims among the society's true believers, one of whom noted that "politicians and bankers have managed to achieve zero growth only by mistake".
The mood of imminence and possibility was very different from that at the annual conventions of the main UK political parties, which were marked by poor turn-outs and lacklustre speeches. Schumacher Society organisers said this year's gathering drew more than twice as many people than a usual year, filling the 800-seat venue.
The speakers - not linked by formal affiliation but by the shared influence of Schumacher - were not short of big ideas.
Lawyer Polly Higgins called for the United Nations to add "ecocide" to its list of "crimes against peace"; Rob Hopkins, the founder of Transition, described a localisation drive to prepare for the peak of oil, and green financier Peter Blom of Triodos Bank, proposed a shake-up of business school teaching and greater "biomimicry" in the financial sector to strengthen a system that has come to resemble a fragile monoculture.
"We've seen some new things today: a green lawyer, a green politician and a green banker," said Diane Schumacher. "If there was any three groups of people that Fritz [Schumacher] suspected, it was them. He'd be delighted by the revolutionary stuff coming out of their mouths."
Some in the audience said Schumacher's heirs were too idealistic, too white, too middle-class. This has been a common refrain for 30 years, but there was also a feeling that, given the current crisis, even such proposals may be too timid.
Bill McKibben, the US climate activist, struck the most assertive note, with a video message explaining why he pulled out of the festival at the last minute so he could join the fight against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would take oil from Canada's tar sands down to the Gulf of Mexico.
McKibben was arrested earlier this year while challenging this pipeline, but he said it was necessary to continue with direct action against the fossil fuel industry because "the worst thing that ever happened to the world is now happening".
The tar sands, he said, contained enough oil to raise the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere from the current 393 parts per million (ppm) level to 530ppm, which would warm the world by about 1C.
"I look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with you in the most important fight humans have ever fought," he said, in a sign-off that met with some of the loudest applause of the weekend.
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