The (En)Rich List celebrates a wealth of inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures. More »
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1
19mil
An internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist best known for his critique of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralized and appropriate technologies.
2
733k
The 'intellectual father' of Ecological Economics and the steady state economy, and founder of the journal Ecological Economics.
3
666k
Team member of MIT's Club of Rome, co-author of Limits to Growth, founder of the Sustainability Institute and co-founder of the Balaton Group.
4
937k
Author, speaker, activist, educator, and co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network.
5
1.75mil
Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris-Sud, the main intellectual force behind the popularization of the Décroissance (Degrowth) Movement, and author of 'Farewell to Growth'.
6
2.27mil
Professor of Sustainable Development, Economics Commissioner of UK Sustainable Development Commission, TED Speaker, and author of "Prosperity without Growth".
7
4.59mil
Environmental activist, philosopher, a major figure in the eco-feminist movement, author of over 20 books and other works critiquing the corporatization of the global food system.
8
9.05mil
Author, activist and environmentalist. Founder of the 350.org movement for addressing climate change.
9
98.1mil
Political and ideological leader, foregrounded non-violence activist tools and led campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, ending untouchability and increasing economic self-reliance.
10
1.11mil
Researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist who, along with David Holmgren, is considered to be the 'father of permaculture'; founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania.
11
2.56mil
Philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and maverick social critic of the institutions of contemporary culture and their effects on education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development.
12
8.01mil
Human rights activist and former member of the National Council of Women of Kenya; initiated the Green Belt Movement.
13
791k
Originator of the Ecological Footprint, past President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, and a Fellow of both the Post-Carbon Institute and the One Earth Initiative.
14
3.53mil
Author and journalist known for his environmental and political activism; founder of The Land is Ours campaign and the Arrest Blair campaign.
15
2.35mil
Author, educator and speaker on peak oil, fossil fuel depletion, relocalization and resilience; a senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. Author of 'Powerdown', 'Peak Everything' and 'The End of Growth'.
16
1.61mil
An economist, educator, peace activist, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher; cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science.
17
499k
Emeritus Professor of Systems Management of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire, co-author of 'Limits to Growth', and co-founder of the Balaton Group.
18
480k
Author and activist known for co-creating the permaculture concept and movement along with Bill Mollison.
19
875k
President of the Global Footprint Network, and co-creator and developer of the Ecological Footprint, a measure of human demand on nature.
20
6.3mil
Biologist and educator, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. Best known for his book 'The Population Bomb'.
21
3.83mil
Writer, conversationalist, activist and speaker; focused on sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, rural communities, interconnectedness of food production, the environment, community, and localism.
22
1.97mil
Author and filmmaker whose work has critiqued excessive and environmentally damaging consumerism; known for the online film 'The Story of Stuff', which has been viewed by millions of people in over 200 countries.
23
220k
Best known for the documentary 'Living Without Money', an author, teacher and psychotherapist who has managed to step out of existing structures and find a new way of living. Founded Germany’s first exchange circle.
24
212mil
Clergyman, activist and Civil Rights leader who led the African-American Civil Rights movement, using nonviolent methods taught by Gandhi.
25
1.23mil
Economist, writer, advocate for local economies, co-founder of Yes! Magazine, and a former Harvard Business School Professor. Author of 'When Corporations Rule the World', and 'The Great Turning'.
26
664k
Environmentalist and academic, active on both climate change and consumption issues. Author of 'Requiem for a Species', 'Affluenza', and 'Growth Fetish'.
27
15.7mil
19th century philosopher and political economist, author of 'Of the Stationary State' which recognised wealth beyond the material, and argued that unlimited growth would cause environmental destruction and reduced quality of life.
28
132mil
The spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people who has consistently advocated policies of non-violence, even in the face of extreme aggression. First Nobel Laureate to be recognized for concern for global environmental problems.
29
12.5mil
Journalist and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization; author of 'No Logo' and 'The Shock Doctrine'.
30
676k
Sociologist who studies trends in working time and leisure, consumerism, work and family, women's issues and economic justice. Author of several books including 'Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth'.
31
911k
Aka The Moneyless Man, a writer and activist best known for founding the online Freeconomy Community, and for living without money since November 2008. Author of 'The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living'.
32
1.96mil
Former scientist and Fortune 300 executive and creator of 'The Crash Course', a 20-chapter online video course that educates viewers on our broken economic system, the crisis of population demographics, and peak oil.
33
60k
'Sharing lawyer', Co-Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center and co-author of 'The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community'.
34
1.07mil
Author, filmmaker and national coordinator of Take Back Your Time, an organization challenging time poverty and overwork; author of 'What's The Economy For, Anyway?' and co-author of 'Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic'.
35
63mil
Activist and President of Bolivia, advocate for social justice, leader of the Movement for Socialism party (MAS), which seeks to give more power to the country's indigenous and poor communities by means of land reforms.
36
863k
Sociologist, activist and author of many works on women and globalisation including 'Ecofeminism', with Vandana Shiva, and 'The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy', with Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen.
37
424k
Economist who focuses on development alternatives that promote global equity and justice. Author of 'Human Scale Development' and 'From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics'.
38
367k
Entrepreneur and founder of the sustainable business, White Dog Cafe, co-founder of the nationwide Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, international leader in the local living economies movement.
39
13.9mil
Developer of the 'conscientização' ('conscientization') social and educational concept of 'consciousness raising'; taught poor and illiterate members of Brazilian society to read at a time when literacy was a requirement for suffrage.
40
484k
Architect, professor, environmentalist and advocate of complementary currencies. Author of 'Interest and Inflation-Free Money: Creating an Exchange Medium That Works For Everybody and Protects the Earth.'
41
8.2mil
Systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist who coined the term 'Spaceship Earth' to describe the integral nature of the Earth as a living system.
42
8.48mil
Co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster whose programs explain the complexities of the natural sciences in an easily understood way; author of over fifty books.
43
1.03mil
Co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, founder and president of the World Resources Institute, law professor, author, vocal critic of growth models, and a proponent of more equitable and sustainable alternatives.
44
1.97mil
Political economist and one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources, whose Nobel Prize winning work demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed.
45
721k
One of the founders of the emerging discipline of ecological economics and the first President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics. Author of 'Managing without Growth. Slower by Design, not Disaster'.
46
586k
Political scientist whose work is concerned with feminist theory of society, patriarchy and technology, social movements, and ecofeminism; an activist against MAI (Multilateral Agreement in Investment).
47
629k
Founded Open Source Ecology with the goal of creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source DIY tool set of 50 different industrial machines necessary to create a small civilization with modern comforts.
48
115k
Philosopher and pacifist who coined the term 'voluntary simplicity'; author of 'The Power of Non-Violence', and 'The Value of Voluntary Simplicity'.
49
5.96mil
Founder of the Integral Institute, his work integrates body, mind, soul, and Spirit with self, culture, and nature. Author of books including 'Boomeritis', a critique of postmodern culture and a call to move to a higher relationship to life.
50
3.71mil
Environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute. Author and co-author of more than 50 books including the Plan B series.
51
730k
Politician, activist, and one of the founders of Die Grünen, the German Green Party; international political work and public speaking concentrated on peace, non-violence, ecology, feminism and human rights.
52
39k
Environmentalist, social activist, and pioneer of the Chipko Movement, which used Gandhian methods of non-violent resistance to prevent the destruction of forests in India; known for his work on subaltern social ecology.
53
1.03mil
Physics Professor who argues overpopulation is humanity's greatest challenge; his 'Arithmetic, Population & Energy' lecture, which he has given 1,600+ times since Sept 1969, has over 4 million YouTube hits.
54
1.84mil
Director of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) at Portland State University; co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE); also known for his work on ecosystem services.
55
1.9mil
18th century scholar influential in political economy and demography; author of 'An Essay on the Principle of Population', which observed that population growth is eventually checked by famine and disease.
56
59k
Social scientist, Director of the Institute of the Theory and Practice of Subsistence (ITPS) at Bielefeld, Germany; conducted research on peasant movements in Mexico fighting for ejido and/or common land ownership.
57
1.94mil
Writer, poet, educator and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss; author of The Lorax, which is focused on themes of environmentalism and anti-consumerism.
58
6.7mil
Farmer, Member of the European Parliament and activist against genetically modified crops; spokesman for Via Campesina, the international movement of small-scale farmers, peasants, indigenous peoples and migrants.
59
674k
Eco-philosopher, scholar of general systems theory, deep ecology; advocate for anti-nuclear causes, peace, justice, and environmentalism. Creator of the Work That Reconnects, a framework for personal and social change.
60
1.08mil
Co-founder of several organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty and environmental crises, and emerging solutions; author of 'Diet for a Small Planet', considered the blueprint for eating with a small carbon footprint.
61
1.67mil
Social, indigenous and human rights activist; founder of 'Alternatives to Consumerism' network - to identify sustainable alternatives to the Western consumer model with different spiritual motivations.
62
344k
Key figure in founding the World Social Forum, a parallel to the World Economic Forum, for those around the world who are working on alternatives to world domination by capital; pro-democracy and anti-corruption activist.
63
1.18mil
Journalist, politician and senior member of Yemen's Al-Islah political party; organizer and human rights activist who became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising, part of the Arab Spring.
64
152k
President of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy; conservation biologist and author of 'Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop Them All'.
65
764k
Economist, ecologist, campaigner and writer; co-founder of Ireland-based Feasta (the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability); fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, author of 'The Growth Illusion' and 'The Ecology of Money'.
66
114k
Writer, teacher and speaker focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. Author of 'The Ascent of Humanity' and 'Sacred Economics'.
67
331k
Filmmaker, author and analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide, a pioneer of the localization movement; producer and co-director of 'The Economics of Happiness'.
68
320k
Social innovator who writes, consults and speaks on the power of collaboration and sharing through current and emerging network technologies; author of 'What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption'.
69
1.83mil
Farmer, philosopher and proponent of no-till, no-herbicide farming methods traditional to many indigenous cultures, from which he created a method of farming referred to as ‘Natural Farming’ or ‘Do-Nothing Farming’.
70
4.61mil
Intellectual, Keynesian economist, known for his thinking on the influence of the market power of large corporations; author of 'The Affluent Society'.
71
773k
Journalist, speaker, Slow Movement advocate; author of 'In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed', 'Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting'.
72
11.4mil
Economist known for work on development economics, social choice theory and capability; contributions were influential in the development of United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report.
73
51.7mil
Philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, author of 'Walden', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay 'Civil Disobedience', on individual resistance to government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
74
260k
Economist who developed a biological approach to economic theory; author of 'The Entropy Law and the Economic Process', in which he claims an economy faces limits to growth.
75
7.2mil
Conservationist who was pivotal in advancing the global environmental movement; author of 'The Silent Spring', which highlighted the danger for environmental and human health from the use of chemicals and pesticides.
76
116k
Scientist, researcher, policymaker, author and campaigner. President of the Australian Conservation Foundation and patron of Sustainable Population of Australia. Author of 'Bigger or Better? Australia's Population Debate.
77
3mil
Writer and internet blogger noted for his experiment, along with his family, in attempting to live a 'zero impact' lifestyle in New York City for one year; author of 'No Impact Man'.
78
1.21mil
Social justice, human rights and women's rights activist; founder of India's Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), recognized as one of the world's most remarkable pioneers and entrepreneurs in grassroots development.
79
281k
Founding editor and publisher of 'The Ecologist'; known for his outspoken views opposing industrial society and economic development, and support for the ways and values of traditional peoples.
80
5.87mil
Founder of anthroposophy, a philosophy which attempts to synthesize science and mysticism; Steiner's work inspired the Waldorf School movement.
81
192k
Storyteller and keeper of native lore of the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts and ceremonial medicine man of the Assonet Band; writer, poet and author of eleven books, he is co-founder of the Tribal-Healing Council.
82
433k
Founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives, which researches peer production/governance/property and the open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented modes of human cooperation.
83
963k
Campaigner and policy maker who founded the climate change, energy and interdependence programmes at the new economics foundation; author of 'Ecological Debt: Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations'.
84
6.12mil
Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, the Green Party's first and only Member of Parliament (MP) in the UK House of Commons; campaigns and writes on green economics, localisation and trade justice.
85
128k
Ecological economist working to integrate social, human, and natural capital into the way the world views economics; Fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and the Post Carbon Institute.
86
525k
Founder of Ethical Markets Media, LLC, a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, and columnist; author of 'Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy'.
87
10.7mil
Civil, human and women's rights activist and campaigner; chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
88
2.88mil
President of the Board of the Transnational Institute; works concerns arious aspects of neoliberal globalisation and ideology; author of many books including 'The Debt Boomerang' and 'A Fate Worse Than Debt'.
89
848k
Associate director and policy coordinator of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University; co-author of several books on overpopulation and ecology with her husband, Stanford University professor Paul R. Ehrlich.
90
498k
Historian, political economist, activist, writer and president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives; author of critically acclaimed books on the atomic bomb and atomic diplomacy.
91
1.86mil
Pioneered studies of energy flows in ecosystems; argued that society faced similar energetic constraints. Introduced the concept of emergy, the amount of solar energy embodied in the products of the biosphere and society.
92
2.28mil
Author of 'The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics' which proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.
93
242k
Ann Pettifor is a fellow of the New Economics Foundation, London; best known for her leadership of a worldwide campaign to cancel approximately $100 billion of debts owed by 42 of the poorest countries – Jubilee 2000.
94
1.28mil
Researcher of social inequalities, best known for his book with Kate Pickett 'The Spirit Level', which claims that societies with more equal distribution of incomes have better health, fewer social problems and are more cohesive.
95
685k
Natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, and author of 'Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature', an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature's designs and processes.
96
6.49mil
Former President of Ireland, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Honorary President of Oxfam International; established several international trade, social justice and human rights initiatives.
97
5.4mil
Trade union leader and environmentalist who fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and indigenous peoples.
98
301k
Sustainable food and farming and local food economy advocate, formerly director of California’s Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign; author of 'Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat'.
99
387k
Economist and author of 'The Coal Question' in which he observed that improving energy efficiency typically reduced energy costs and thereby increased rather than decreased energy use, an effect now known as 'Jevon's paradox'.
{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
helen nearing
author, artist, homesteader, and co-creator of the 1940’s back to the land movement in the USA.
scott nearing
radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, homesteader, and advocate of simple living.
Thanks Manuel – we agree! Helen and Scott are in our honourable mentions list: http://enrichlist.org/honorable-mentions/.
Donnie and the team
Agreed!
Search: Marx
‘Sorry, but no results were found.’
Ho ho.
Also good to see your post-growth world will not be post-patriarchal. Do you not think these social formations might be connected?
I agree very much with your observation that this, and all too often other lists, display a serious bias of male representation.
Hi Claire. Thanks so much for your observations.
Gender-bias has been at the top of our discussions in developing this list.
Despite dramatic increases in global connectivity, the diversity of influences on Post Growth Institute members is understandably limited. The list is our Top 100 based on this limited experience. We expect that, with time, it will evolve, just as we imagine that this list is more progressive than it would have been had we written it 20 years ago.
We have included many historical figures who helped start the discussion and debate about sustainability and limits to growth. Historically, these have been men, due to the obvious advantages that men have had in receiving formal education, publishing their ideas and being taken seriously as intellectuals and/or pragmatists.
Five of the seven Post Growth team members who created this list are females. Yet in the 2nd round of list voting, where our group moved beyond our direct influences, we all had a hard time expanding the pool of female nominees.
Likewise, our list has mostly white people from “rich, Western countries”. This can be attributed mostly to the fact that English-speaking people from Western backgrounds receive more attention for their ideas and actions, on a global scale (due to resource, language and other biases) and, in the Western world, white people still have major advantages in receiving formal education, publishing their work and being taken seriously.
We hope that a look beyond the surface will reveal the (En)Rich List as a step towards greater equity. Keeping in mind this site is a parody of the Forbes List, it’s worth noting that the (En)Rich List Top 100 includes 32 females. The Forbes Rich List Top 100 includes 11.
We’re delighted to read your comments because we want this list to promote ongoing conversations. Resources permitting, we hope to open the list to public nominations and voting in the future, so that we can all learn from each other’s thinking and, thereby, increase the pool from which we draw inspiration!
Jen and the Post Growth Institute team
You might need to do some further reading on the Dalai Lama.
Hi Tsering,
Might you be able to point us in the general direction you had in mind?
Thanks,
Donnie and the Post Growth team
Here are some more inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures:
Sunita Narain
Harish Hande
Jeremy Rifkin
Zhao Zhong
Jayati Ghosh
Satish Kumar
Zhengrong Shi
Richard Branson
Paul Polak
Marty Chan
Prigi Arisandi
Zhang Yue
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Anote Tong
Bunker Roy
Abdul Aziz bin Ali Al-Nuaimi
Simon Maxwell
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Gunter Pauli
Chandran Nair
Ellen MacArthur
Michael Liebreich
Achim Steiner
David Hasanat
Thanks Charles. A real mix of people in there, many of whom are unfamiliar to us!
Gunter Pauli will be in Sydney early April.
Donnie and the Post Growth team
You can find many of these people at the Making It magazine web site: http://www.makingitmagazine.net – they have contributed articles to the magazine which deals with global industrial development issues.
Arnie Schwarzenegger? With his 12 Hummers??
They might want to add Allan Savory to the list. His work on restoring grasslands is our surest hope of mitigating global warming, desertification and famine.
Thanks Seth. Alan’s certainly pioneered some great work – appreciate the suggestion – will keep in mind for next time!
It’s a great effort, really, but flawed it seems. I can’t really explain it but I personally know many of the people on the first couple pages, who nearly all share a strange belief. With the exception of Ken Boulding (who learned about it as a problem from JM Keynes and wrote on it for years) they all dismiss the connection between societal policies for maximizing rates of growing investment savings and the tendency of the economies to ever accelerate their rates of depleting everything usable on earth. I’ve been scratching my head between efforts to write about that for years and years. Why is there a near blanket denial of the most visible direct cause of the problem??
Jessie,
I wouldn’t say that many of these people on the first page dismiss this concept. In fact, for many this is part of the central acceptance that you cannot continue to grow the economy on a finite planet. Maximizing rates of growing investment savings is right up there with belief that we can grow our economy forever. A post growth (or steady state) economy cannot function that way. Once you remove the growth imperative you have to remove compound interest from the monetary system if you want it to have any connection to natural stocks. You also have to introduce policies that protect the natural wealth of our planet and maintain a sustainable scale (Herman Daly) of our economy, allowing for those ecosystem services to regenerate the amount we use every cycle.
Though he’s not on the list, Freddrick Soddy did influence many you are, and said: “you cannot permanently pit an absurd human convention, such as the spontaneous increment of debt [compound interest] against the natural law of the spontaneous decrement of wealth [entropy].” Debt of course has to be connected to savings, at least in a more sustainable monetary system. Again, Herman Daly is a proponent of this idea.
Herman Daly’s view on compound interest: “debt can endure forever; wealth cannot, because its physical dimension is subject to the destructive force of entropy…the positive feedback of compound interest must be offset by counteracting forces of debt repudiation, such as inflation, bankruptcy, or confiscatory taxation, all of which breed violence.”
Additionally, you are talking about savings of monetary “wealth,” of which currently its value is (a) arbitrary and (b) not necessarily reliant on natural stocks. The mear concept of inflation and compound interest show that while we may value certain things based on natural stocks, the value of our money is disconnected from them. A more adequate form of money would be base on time, not debt or gold, and would not relay on compound interest to accelerate value loss.
Cheers,
Joshua
Joshua, Your comment helps me clarify my complaint. The contradiction I’m trying to point out is about how eloquent people are about the limits of the economy’s use of the earth, but at the same time remain peculiarly silent about our use of money to make endless multiplying requests for resources to be consumed for providing us services.
What’s your take on that cockeyed disconnection? Wouldn’t it seem to utterly disable well meaning efforts to constrain resource use, if at the same time you are “stabilizing” ever multiplying resource demand?
Ever multiplying resource demand is what naturally happens when the basic principles of government and society include stabilizing rates of profit so people can use their investments to multiply their investments. Why that’s among the central purposes of government seems to be that it’s what literally everyone wants, to have their idle savings produce a multiplying “free lunch”. So I think government is just doing what everyone asks for. You’d think the people who noticed the dire circumstance that ever growing resource use causes would also notice it was connected to ever growing demand for resource use.
It appears Keynes was actually the first person who *did* notice the connection. So if the “enrich list” were to be of people who successfully brought attention to the real dilemma facing us, our approaching a natural limit of money in a society entirely organized around multiplying money, it would contain only Keynes and Boulding.
Jessie,
There certainly are people who seem to want to ‘have their cake and eat it too’–material affluence AND sustainability for all. As you point out, this isn’t possible. Post Growth Institute (PGI) recognizes this. While not always directly addressing the core tenets of the unsustainable financial system (or using different language when they do), the people celebrated in the (En)Rich List are all in some way or another creating alternatives to a society organized around multiplying (and concentrating) money. Remember that our List was created as a parody of the values touted by the Forbes parade of billionaires, not a magic-bullet ‘solution’ or the last word in the complexities of the financial and ecological crisis.
You might be interested in one of Post Growth’s projects, Free Money Day, designed to get people thinking about our relationships to money and how it dictates the terms of our lives. Questioning money as the basis of value is one of the reasons PGI exists.
Thanks,
Ingrid and the Post Growth team
Ingrid, It most certainly does throw me into a strange and uncomfortable position to so strongly support the purposes and values of the Post Growth community, and also have to point out a problem. As a physicist I appear to stand on much firmer ground than our near societal unanimity for avoiding the most emotionally sensitive part of our problem.
I study what makes natural systems succeed or fail, letting them grow to smoothly stabilize or to collapse themselves in exhaustion along with their environments. They either change strategy while still vigorously expanding, to make peace with themselves and their worlds, or they rip themselves and their part of the world apart. As far as I know J M Keynes was the first to discover that, so evidently wildly misunderstood by the economics profession.
We steer our economy using money, managing our resource uses by reinvesting our resource profits. It’s a “neat trick” that lets us continually multiply our control of our environment and consume everything usable on earth as fast as human creativity makes it possible, ~3% a year faster and faster. If you sense a problem with that central organizing purpose of our larger society and “opt out”…, it’s indeed a courageous personal step. But it doesn’t save your world. The whole system has to “come home” to living at peace with the earth, or the parts will have no whole to be part of.
There may be many different ways to say it, but there is only one available means of doing it. That’s for the system as a whole to change how it manages its profits. Rather than to use profits to multiply our new form of life to oblivion, it would need to apply the profits to stabilizing our radically new way of life on earth, and our radically new relationships with the rest of nature.
Everyone in the no-growth community is surely alluding to that, one way or another. So far all the popular proposed strategies seem carefully designed to avoid bringing up the need to persuade mainstream global society to stop using its profits to multiply profits, now that it has become delusional. I think there’s no better time to point out such things than when you happen to see them, understanding that the real cause is that we live in a natural world, and in this case, full of surprises. The end of growth is either “coming home” or a leap into nature’s pile of discards.
Congratulations to Donnie and team on a brilliant source of inspiration!
Best of luck,
Tamir
I,m sorry Donny but I can’t find Martin Luther King even in the honourable mention and if you could please put Vincent Lingiari, 1966 “We want to live on our land, our way” if I put this on my facebook without them it would be very disrespectful, I know you would agree that it was an innocent oversight and hope to correct. Cheers
Hi Robyn,
Martin Luther King Junior’s profile can be seen here.
While we’re not updating the list at the moment, we’ll be sure to keep VL in mind for any future iterations – thanks for reminding us of his incredible contributions which are continued by Pat Dodson, Paul Lane and others at the Lingiari Foundation, amongst many others who fight for greater social equity.
Donnie
Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians is missing in this terrific lineup of people who are changing the world and need our support. Her work for world water protection as a human right and her work for social justice regarding environmental and indigenous rights brings a lot of us onside to do our best to work for a better world for all.
Thanks Norah,
A wonderful suggestion that we’ll take into account for any future iterations of the list.
Donnie and the team
Thank you for this list, which is so incredibly much more inspiring and liberating than the Forbes list! But I wonder about people who live some of the paths described by people on this list – we are used to celebrating influential figures in the First World, but what about more who are less First World academic/professional types or admired by same? Those who live a difference for the world’s people who will never know who some of these figures are?
Thanks Cynthia,
Your comments are really poignant. We thought long and hard about sharing with the world profiles of people who are ‘living’ sustainability and rarely receive exposure. In the end, we realised that, for this project to get up and running, we needed to work from our strengths, cognisant of our limitations. You can see more about this approach in the About page and in this particular comment.
Is what you suggest a project to which you might like to contribute? We’re talking at the moment with people in Tasmania, Australia, who would like to do a local version of the (En)Rich list in their own state.
Donnie and the team
Yes, an interesting listing of influential people. I was pleased to see an entry on Michel Bauwens who has been doing marvellous work for p2p interaction.I have contributed four “articles” to his site, and they may be of interest here.
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Universal_Debating_Project
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Improvised_Voice_Instrumental_Music
Interesting list. Some names I’d consider:
José María Arizmendiarrieta, founder of the Mondragon Corporation, one of the largest networks of worker-owned and controlled cooperatives, a model for many around the world.
Elinor Ostrom, Noble winner for her work on the governance of commons
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, and catalyst of the free and open source software movement
Good suggestions, Neal. We are not yet sure how we are going to arrange the selection process for a possible 2nd edition of the list (maybe take nominations by and for natives of each continent?) but we’ll keep those in mind.
I know there’s a lot to scan so easy to miss but we actually did get Elinor Ostrom in there at #44.
Cheers,
Ingrid and the Post Growth team
Nice to see Amartya Sen at no. 71. I was expecting Thomas Edison too.
the list is fine.but how can rank mahathmagandi as rank 9 and vandanasiva as 7.this is not agreeable.the ideology of gandhi is everlasting. he is the father of our nation india. vanadana siva is just an activist. comparing these two person vandana is far away from gandhi.
Thanks for the comment.
Some of our group had a similar perspective to the one you present, others didn’t. The end result, with our internal voting, was as you see the list in its present form. Hopefully it can be seen less about a ‘ranking’ and more about increasing exposure for some wonderful people and their work.
Donnie and the team
Would probably be best to left deceased people (s.a. Gandhi) out of the list. I don’t think Forbes lists dead people either, do they? (got here via this tweet: http://twitter.com/postgrowth/status/308913351847714816)
Interesting unknown names – will have a look.
Hi Asko,
Thanks for your comment. We planned to provide a sort option so that people could filter by whether someone was still alive or not, but with limited resources we created as much functionality as we could. Given the project is part educational and part parody, we thought it valuable to include people even if they had passed on.
Donnie and the team
This is an amazing list — thank you for creating it! I’m especially excited to see names that I’m not familiar with, because that means I get to learn about new amazing, inspiring people.
I think it’s a great list. Lists of this kind are unavoidably subjective and based on the collective life experiences of the people who made them. People are going to disagree about inclusions, exclusions, and rankings. That’s all fine and good and healthy. Thanks for putting this out there. It gets the conversation started, and exposes us to people we maybe haven’t heard of before. If others disagree, they can publish their own list, and the conversation can grow yet further.
Inevitably, I do have a few suggestions for consideration in the next round. They may be Bay Area-centric, because that’s where I live:
Van Jones – advocate for equity and “green jobs”, powerful and eloquent voice for equity and climate change issues
Nikki Henderson – executive director of people’s community market in Oakland; maybe still a little early in her career – but a rising star in the food justice movement
Al Gore – yes he’s a pudgy self-absorbed rich white guy, but you can’t underestimate what he’s done to bring climate change into the national conversation
Barrack Obama – maybe one day? Depending on his climate change legacy. But then again, he has been a tireless advocate for continued and perpetual economic growth. So…maybe not.
All these people may or may not deserve a place on the list. I could go either way. But there is one person whose omission from the list I would consider conspicuous. They weren’t even given an honorable mention. I suspect that if you were to ask the people on the list to make their own version of the list, many of them would include this person on the list, almost certainly within the top 50. The person:
David W. Orr – educator, author, long-time and tireless advocate for ecological literacy in our education systems, founder of the Oberlin Initiative, an ambitious undertaking to transform an entire community to be resilient, self-sustaining, and carbon neutral
Thanks Chris! We’ll certainly take these suggestions into account (especially David W. Orr) if/when we do an update to the list.
this is a wonderful website !
As much as admire the top 7, I’m not sure they should really top Ghandi.
Thanks for the feedback Jim. We certainly thought long and hard about Ghandi’s place in the list. In the end, we used a democratic voting process across our entire team, and a few of our team shared aspects of Gandhi’s life of which we weren’t so aware that could have influenced the voting. At the end of the day, it’s a highly subjective ordering, with the order mattering less, perhaps, than shining a spotlight on these incredible people.
Jessie,
We hope you will continue to support PGI despite the difference of opinion on strategy. I think our disagreement is not on whether the premise of contemporary society is delusional but whether raw information-based reasoning will catalyze the necessary change. I don’t see our approach as denial of the problem you describe so much as recognition that we do not have the leverage to directly effect that change ourselves, and that when a critical mass of people is entrenched in a particular set of thoughts and behaviors, just pointing out the problem is not enough. Yelling “Iceberg!” is not likely to change the turning radius on the Titanic. Especially when the captains are dead set on proving they’re unsinkable.
The Post Growth team recognizes that time is short, and we are choosing to focus our efforts on ideological and practical projects where we see the most potential for transformation. We are skeptical of the potential for a single top-down solution, if it is feasible at all, to avoid becoming corrupted or misunderstood. We recognize the work of many and varied people because we disagree that there is “only one available means” in favor of the view that it will take millions of people and dozens of compatible (though not necessarily institutionally dictated, centralized) strategies to create and sustain alternatives to oblivion, which is what we all hope for.
I do believe that if the financial system does not rearrange itself in short order, it will disintegrate of its own accord. And if the growth-based financial system does not disintegrate before the global ecosystem is devastated, there will be no parts to live in. That far I think we agree. A unified “coming home” would indeed be ideal; the opposite possibility is nearly unthinkable even for someone like me who has been thinking about it intently for 10 years or so now and vaguely for 10+ years before that. However, I don’t see the end of growth as a clean all-or-nothing dichotomy.
I imagine what we’re actually facing is somewhere in between: maybe a few more recession-plateau ratchet steps down, followed by global chaos and a period of immense suffering (which we are already seeing in communities on the wrong side of ‘globalization’), followed by emergency reorganization. The rebuilding period will almost certainly be piecemeal and messy, with lots of trial-and-error and surprises, some of them quite unpleasant for people who thought they were exempt from the basic principles of nature. Regardless of the timing and character of the transition, we will be working with climate, air, water, soils, and biological communities that have been compromised indefinitely. It seems to me that until mainstream society comes to its senses (which I am afraid will take a crisis on the magnitude of the Great Depression at least), the best we can do is build ‘lifeboats’ that will provide resting places and serve as models for replication and adaptation, slowing the degradation of the ecosystem in the short run and minimizing the degree to which human communities go down with the ship later on.
I would be happy to continue the dialogue via e-mail. I think I have said as much as I can in the public forum on behalf of PGI. I will contact you shortly.
Be well,
Ingrid and the PGI team
Great, I hope I can find a way to get you to appreciate the natural forces I’m trying to describe. I would agree with just about everything you say here, actually. What I pointed out is not so much intended as offering a better strategy, but one that is unavoidably essential to include with the others. The other more socially motivated efforts are not wrong in any way, except for hoping they can be enough do the job without engaging the physical systems of nature.
Yes, my short description might have sounded like a “top down” model. When natural growth systems transition from systematic growth to systematic maturation it appears as if all the parts are acting in unison. Nature doesn’t even have a top-down method she can use, in any case. So, finding “the idea that works” emerging more or less everywhere at once is more how it usually looks. The pieces all just seem to fall together, like we observed at the end of the Soviet Union and in the recent Arab spring, or other great moments of consensus change.
For humanity to do what it never has done in unison before may or may not require our getting to a point of greater desperation than everyone presently feels. I expect you realize our continued failure to find a common idea of what to do will certainly keep taking us toward ever more desperate circumstances, though. Discovering that moment of acting as a whole for the first time could either then happen so smoothly as if by design, or like a kind of birth process, that appears rather painful and messy with the new organism somehow emerging bewildered but unscathed.
To Jessie and Joshua, and Ingrid and the whole Post-Growth team,
THANK YOU for letting the above comment stream happen. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to scroll to a comments section and see actual discourse on this most central of issues. I applaud the post-growth team and their creation of this imperfect, incomplete, discourse-inspiring list – thank you for your positive and embracing attitude toward all the comments that I’m sure you knew you’d receive. It is my belief that the ability to engage in uncensored and effective discourse will be invaluable in navigating the desperate times we find ourselves in, as the need to understand and resolve increasingly complex and divergent information from all aspects of the human experience grows. Jessie – I found your last paragraph in the above comment, describing the possibility of humanity acting as a whole, particularly inspiring. I don’t know who you are, but can I quote you nonetheless?
Thanks, Taya! Encouragement much appreciated. Please keep following us and repost the (En)Rich List wherever you can. 😀
Taya,
I’m really am a physicist, one who studies how complex natural systems quite frequently change directions of development in unison, to create the familiar behaviors of things that are, or act like, self-directed organisms. That no system on earth actually has a top-down control method for its unified behaviors, is one of the things you eventually find while studying them. I wrote a new short discussion of how to begin using my way of studying them, as a method of closely observing their behaviors. Ingrid recently asked of I had one, and so I thought I’d try a new approach, while also collecting links to some of my old ones.
fyi – “Steps to a natural systems view”
http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2012/03/31/steps-to-a-natural-systems-view/