E. F. Schumacher on green building, consumption, and satisfaction

E. F. Schumacher would have been 100 this year, but his insights are as fresh as ever. In a 3-minute video posted by the Center for a New American Dream, the lifelong advocate for "alternative technology" and "Buddhist economics" explains how living on less resources doesn't mean living less well, but in fact, better.

Schumacher's 1973 classic, Small is Beautiful, is one of the most influential books published since World War II, according to the New York Times. In it, he explains that consuming more resources won't solve our economic or societal problems. The "logic of production" must be brought under control. 

". . . The fight against pollution," he writes, "[cannot] be successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of a scale, a complexity, and a degree of violence which, as is becoming more and more apparent, do not fit into the laws of the universe . . ."

His efforts to align technology and industry with natural order live on at Practical Action (which he helped found under a different name), and the New Economics Institute.

Comments

[Steve Purvis]

Thanks for sharing this great clip, it is a classic! With regard to his final quip there, Wendell Berry goes to some length in exploring his concept of a Christian Economics. Not sure how many people have read that, maybe Schumacher was right!

Also, Schumacher was an advocate of Intermediate or "Appropriate Technology", although others like the Welsh "Centre for Alternative Technology" (www.cat.org.uk) follow the principles closely, it seems. Schumacher also referred to the "Problem of Production", the first essay/chapter of "Small is Beautiful". Ha! I'm getting all obsessive!

Thanks again for sharing!