My hero: Edward Goldsmith
DANTE
Edward Goldsmith / Italian interview
DRAGON
Obituaries / Edward Goldsmith
Edward Goldsmith / Environmentalist who founded 'Ecology' magazine and championed the green movement
Edward Goldsmith / Environmentalist who founded 'Ecology' magazine and championed the green movement
Zac Goldsmith
Saturday 26 September 2009 00.01 BST
My uncle Teddy died last month and I will miss him enormously. But his death is more than a personal blow.
Teddy was an early pioneer of the green movement. He launched the Ecologist magazine four decades ago, and his Blueprint for Survival was a defining document. It sold in huge numbers, and inspired countless young people to get involved. He helped set up the first green political party - People, which later became the Green party.
Teddy's slogan was "No deserts in Suffolk", and to capture people's attention, he recruited a camel. He lost his deposit, and in a bizarre twist was chased by a paper-waving official who accused him of animal cruelty, citing the effects on the camel of breathing in car fumes. "That's exactly my point," Teddy declared. "Imagine what it's doing to us!"
Today we're all green. But when Teddy started out, he was virtually alone. His was a decision to stand apart from his peers, risk marginalisation and even ridicule. But he never minded. When he was described by an Italian bishop as "the anti-Christ", he was flattered. When President Suharto of Indonesia labelled him an "enemy of the state", he wore it as a badge of honour. The insults went on and on, and he relished them all.
Part of the reason was that he was hard to pigeonhole. In some ways he was conservative; he had huge respect for traditional societies and he hated change. When I introduced glossy paper to the Ecologist, he thought it was outlandish. But he was also radical and courageous. Whenever the Ecologist was sent legal threats, his reaction was always the same: "Bring it on!"
Near the end of his life, Teddy said; "If in some small way I've helped to slow the runaway juggernaut that we've created, or make people aware of it, that has to be a good thing." He did more than that. He was responsible, perhaps more than anyone else, for waking us up from our collective slumber. He will remain a hero of mine, and if we survive the crisis, he will be revered by many, many others.
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