Surviving the Future

“Each time I encountered David Fleming, he left behind something whose value I was a little too slow to recognise. A sketch for Tradable Energy Quotas. A critique of the nuclear fuel cycle. And clearest in my memory: a slim working paper entitled The Lean Economy. It took me nearly a decade to respond properly to its call. In Surviving the Future, Fleming has left behind his greatest gift: a remarkable clarity of vision—a way of seeing the world not just for what it is, but for what it might be. Hopefully, this time I’m ready for it.”--Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Surrey; author of Prosperity without Growth

“David Fleming was an iconoclast in a time when orthodox thinking reasserted suffocating control. When many major environmental voices had, in effect, decided to 'go with the flow', accept the mainstream economy, and do their best to make it greener, David Fleming went the other way. His analysis told him that nothing short of a paradigm shift could ensure our collective survival, and he said so, loudly, without fear of being marginalised. His courage in saying unpopular things is clear in these writings, and we should all thank him. Without the uncompromising clarity of David's writing, we would delude ourselves as to the scale and the immediacy with which we must reshape the economy and our lifestyles. Thank goodness his analysis can now be shared more widely.”--Andrew Simms, codirector, New Weather Institute; fellow, New Economics Foundation; author of Cancel the Apocalypse

“David Fleming was an elder of the UK green movement and a key figure in the early Green Party. Drawing on the heritage of Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Fleming’s beautifully written and nourishing vision of a post-growth economics grounded in human-scale culture and community—rather than big finance—is both inspiring and ever more topical.”--Caroline Lucas MP, former leader, Green Party of England and Wales; former Member of the European Parliament

“David Fleming predicts environmental catastrophe but also proposes a solution that stems from the real motives of people and not from some comprehensive political agenda. He writes lucidly and eloquently of the moral and spiritual qualities on which we might draw in our ‘descent’ to a Lean Economy. His highly poetic description of these qualities is neither gloomy nor self-deceived but tranquil and inspiring. All environmental activists should read him and learn to think in his cultivated and nuanced way.”--Roger Scruton, writer and philosopher; author of over thirty books, including Green Philosophy

“Why do some of the truly great books only emerge and exact their influence upon us after the death of their authors? Perhaps it takes a lifetime to accrue and refine the necessary wisdom. Or perhaps it simply takes the rest of us too long to catch up. Like Thoreau, Fleming's masterpiece brims not only with fresh insight into every nook and cranny of our culture and what it means to be human, but with such wit and humour that its challenging ideas and radical perspectives become a refreshing delight. If we’re to have a future worth surviving, this book demands to be read, re-read, and—ultimately—acted upon.”--Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Manifesto and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi

“Shaun Chamberlin has edited Fleming’s Lean Logic to a string of gems that refract the burning issues of our times.”--Professor Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Poacher’s Pilgrimage

“‘The end is nigh’ messages are a dime a dozen these days. Fleming’s work doesn’t shy away from that, but it’s his vision of what could come next—and the potential richness, carnival, and culture of it—that I think is so rare and precious in these books. Less what we stand to lose and more what we've lost already and stand to regain if we do things right.”--Jeremy Leggett, founder, Solarcentury and SolarAid; author of The Winning of the Carbon War

“I can’t say enough good things about this book. David Fleming’s keen interdisciplinary mind was at home in economics, history, and anthropology, so when he imagines the world beyond fossil fuels, the result is not just a schematic diagram but narrative with bone, sinew, flesh, and blood. This is how real human beings could and hopefully will respond to climate change and resource depletion.”--Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute

“David Fleming has laid out a logical, persuasive, and very readable pathway to dealing with the most crucial catastrophe we face: the double bind of growth—if no growth the economy fails, if growth the economy fails. He illuminates the ‘transition from the global city’ to ‘habitats on a human scale’ and an economy ‘organized around the rediscovery of community.’ If there will be any survival following the coming collapse, it will be through following the wisdom provided here.”--Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale