David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was an economist, cultural historian and writer on environmental issues, based in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of

peak oil Peak oil is the hypothetical point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which it is argued that production will begin an irreversible decline. It is related to the distinct concept of oil depletion; while ...

's approach and invented the influential TEQs system, designed to address this and

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

. He was also a pioneer of

post-growth Post-growth is stance on economic growth concerning the limits-to-growth dilemma — recognition that, on a planet of finite material resources, extractive economies and populations cannot grow infinitely. The term "post-growth" acknowledges t ...

economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...

, the

Transition Towns The terms transition town, transition initiative and transition model refer to grassroot community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instabilitythrough r ...

movement and the

New Economics Foundation The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a British think-tank that promotes "social, economic and environmental justice". NEF was founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) with the aim of working for a "new model of wealth ...

, as well as a Chairman of the

Soil Association The Soil Association is a British registered charity. The organisation activities include campaigning – against intensive farming, for local purchasing and public education on nutrition – and certification of organic foods. It was establ ...

. Alongside these roles, his wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, ''Lean Logic'' and ''Surviving the Future'' (published posthumously in 2016). A feature film about his perspective and legacy, ''The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?'', was released in 2020, directed by Peter William Armstrong.

Family background and early life

He was born in

Chiddingfold Chiddingfold is a village and civil parish in the Weald in the Waverley district of Surrey, England. It lies on the A283 road between Milford and Petworth. The parish includes the hamlets of Ansteadbrook, High Street Green and Combe Common ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, to Norman Bell Beatie Fleming, a

Harley Street Harley Street is a street in Marylebone, Central London, which has, since the 19th century housed a large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery. It was named after Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.< ...

eye surgeon, and Joan Margaret Fleming, an award-winning crime writer. He and his three sisters were thus the grandchildren of the Scottish historian and antiquary

David Hay Fleming David Hay Fleming, LL.D. (1849–1931) was a Scottish historian and antiquary. Biography Fleming came from St Andrews, a university town in East Fife and was educated at Madras College secondary school. His family had a china and stoneware bus ...

. He attended

Oundle School Oundle School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) for pupils 11–18 situated in the market town of Oundle in Northamptonshire, England. The school has been governed by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City ...

before reading

Modern History The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

from 1959 to 1962. He then worked in manufacturing (textiles), marketing (detergents), advertising and financial public relations, before earning an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from Cranfield University in 1968.

Biography

He was the Ecology (Green) Party's economics spokesman and

press secretary A press secretary or press officer is a senior advisor who provides advice on how to deal with the news media and, using news management techniques, helps their employer to maintain a positive public image and avoid negative media coverage. Dut ...

between 1977 and 1980 (the party office at that time being his flat in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

). From 1977 to 1995, he worked as an independent consultant in environmental policy and business strategy for the financial services industry, and in 1980 began studies in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

Birkbeck College Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, completing an MSc in 1982 and a PhD on the economics of the market for positional goods in 1988. In this time, he also helped to organise The Other Economic Summit (TOES), first held in 1984 - a regular counter-summit to the annual G7 summits. TOES is also noted as the birthplace of the

, an organisation with which Fleming retained close links. Also in 1984, he became Honorary Treasurer of the

, and then was appointed that organisation's

Chairman The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...

from 1988 to 1991. In 1995, his manual on the formation and management of investment funds in the

Former Soviet Union The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...

was published. From 1995 until his death, he wrote and lectured widely on the environmental and social issues which he expected to have a major impact on the global market economy in the 21st century, including

oil depletion Oil depletion is the decline in oil production of a well, oil field, or geographic area. The Hubbert peak theory makes predictions of production rates based on prior discovery rates and anticipated production rates. Hubbert curves predict that ...

and

. He was a regular contributor to both ''Country Life'' magazine and

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

's ''Today'' programme, and was published in ''Prospect'' and other journals, as well as in academic literature and popular newspapers. He was editor of ''The Countryside in 2097'', published in 1997, and gave the third annual Feasta lecture in 2001, with his seminal ''Energy and the Common Purpose'' first published in 2005. David Fleming died in his sleep on 29 November 2010, while visiting a friend in Amsterdam. For over thirty years Fleming worked on the book that would pull together the various strands of his thinking, ''Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It'' (formerly provisionally titled ''The Lean Economy''). It was completed just before his death and posthumously published in 2016 by

Chelsea Green Publishing Chelsea Green Publishing is an American publishing company which specialises in non-fiction books on progressive politics and sustainable living. Based in Vermont, it has published over 400 books since it was founded in 1984, and now releases bet ...

, accompanied by a paperback version entitled ''Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy''.

Views and Ideas

He conceived and developed the idea of TEQs - the first and most widely studied model for the implementation of a

carbon rationing Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up ...

system. His April 1999 article for ''Prospect'' magazine, "The next oil shock?", interpreted the

International Energy Agency The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation, established in 1974, that provides policy recommendations, analysis and data on the entire global energy sector, with a recent focus on curbing carb ...

's 1998 report as predicting an impending global energy crisis. He later revealed that

Fatih Birol Fatih Birol is a Turkish economist and energy expert, who has served as the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) since 1 September 2015. During his time in charge of the IEA, he has taken a series of steps to modernise the ...

– the future Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency – agreed to meet with him after reading the article, and confessed that "you are right… there are maybe six people in the world who understand this". Fleming had a long history with peak oil, having been part of the team who wrote the Ecology Party pamphlet ''The Reckoning'' in 1977, which discussed the issue and our need to rethink our use of energy. In his 2007 book ''The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy: A Life-Cycle in Trouble'', Fleming argued: *Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise. *Shortages of

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

- and the lack of realistic alternatives - leading to interruptions in supply, could be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010–2019, and to deepen thereafter. *It is essential that

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...

should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas. *The world's endowment of

uranium ore Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within the Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the more common elements in the Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. It ...

is now so depleted that the

nuclear industry Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste. He also saw

economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...

as inherently impossible to sustain. In his renowned words, "Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it." As such, a key focus of his work was developing what he called 'the Lean Economy', a vision of how society could hold itself together after the inevitable end of growth, grounded in localisation, community and culture. He founded The Lean Economy Connection (renamed The Fleming Policy Centre after his death) to work on "the long term, stable, intelligent and culturally rich future which human society could enjoy if we understand the current predicament and respond to it decisively." Until his death he remained a strong advocate for TEQs and community-based localisation, and an ardent critic of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

Works

''Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It''

Often described as his life's work, Fleming worked on the award-winning

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...

book for over thirty years. It was completed just before his death and 500 copies of his final draft were posthumously self-published by his family in 2011. After the Dark Mountain Project published extracted entries from the dictionary in two of their journals,

gave the work its full publication in September 2016. ''Lean Logic'' explores themes including ethics, science, relationships, culture, policy, art and history but, unconventionally, it is structured in dictionary format, with each entry followed by a list of other related entries. Through this device, Fleming encourages an active role on the reader, who must follow the narrative of their choice as they consider his thoughts on strategies for the future. Many reviewers have found ''Lean Logic'' hard to categorise, with one describing it as "half encyclopedia, half commonplace book, half a secular bible, half survival guide, half ... yes, that’s a lot of halves, but ... I have never encountered a book that is so hard to characterise yet so hard, despite its weight, to put down ... It’s an incredibly nourishing cultural and scientific treasure trove." ''Lean Logic'' was named in Book of the Year lists from both

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

and GreenBiz, won first place in the 2017 New York Book Show, and was awarded Best in Category at both the PubWest publishing awards and the New England Book Show. In 2020, ''LeanLogic.online'' was launched, making the book's innovative interlinked format available as a searchable, interactive website.

''Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy''

Alongside the final edition of ''Lean Logic'', Chelsea Green simultaneously published a paperback version - ''Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy'' - conceived by Fleming's erstwhile colleague

Shaun Chamberlin Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist, based in London, England. He is the author of ''The Transition Timeline'', co-author of several other books including ''What We Are Fighting For'', chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and was ...

and drawn from the content of the larger book, but edited to produce a more conventionally formatted, read-it-front-to-back introduction to Fleming's work. Fleming's vision of the future is challenging, as he sees in the present "an economy that is destroying the very foundations on which it depends" (ecologically, economically and culturally), but many reviewers have commented on the positive spirit and humour that suffuse both books' pages as he describes strategies and principles for a satisfying, culturally rich future in such difficult circumstances. Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas MP described the paperback as a "beautifully written and nourishing vision of a post-growth economics grounded in human-scale culture and community — rather than big finance", while philosopher

Roger Scruton Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. Editor from 1982 ...

opined that "he writes lucidly and eloquently of the moral and spiritual qualities on which we might draw ... eis 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".

Legacy

Fleming's work was one of the central inspirations behind the now-global

movement. He was a regular speaker at initiatives around the UK and at the early Transition Conferences, and a close friend of Transition movement founder

Rob Hopkins Rob Hopkins is an activist and writer on environmental issues, based in Totnes, England. He is best known as the founder and figurehead of the Transition movement, which he initiated in 2005. Hopkins has written six books on environmentalism ...

, who has described his own work as "simply taking Heinberg's insights into

, Holmgren on

permaculture Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principle ...

and Fleming on community resilience, rolling them together and making the whole thing comprehensible". In 2020, Peter William Armstrong directed a feature film - ''The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?'' - inspired by the growing impact of Fleming's ideas around the world, including testimony from notable individuals such as

Peter Buffett Peter Andrew Buffett (born May 4, 1958) is an American musician, composer, author and philanthropist. With a career that spans more than 30 years, Buffett is an Regional Emmy Award winner, New York Times best-selling author and co-chair of the ...

and

Kate Raworth Kate Raworth (born 13 December 1970) is an English economist known for " doughnut economics", which she understands as an economic model that balances between essential human needs and planetary boundaries. She is Senior Associate at Oxford Unive ...

. And Sterling College (Vermont) run the $1.5
EcoGather and Surviving the Future educational programs
grounded in Fleming's work, with the intention to turn traditional distance learning into "place-based, community-focused education dedicated to the regeneration of ecosystems, communities and local economies".Sterling College Receives $1.5 Million Grant to Launch EcoGather
/ref>

References

External links

The Fleming Policy Centre homepage

1997 - "Tradable quotas: using information technology to cap national carbon emissions", peer-reviewed paper in ''European Environment''

1998 - "After growth—climax: rising unemployment as the cue for evolution to the lean economy", peer-reviewed paper in ''European Environment''

1999-2009 - ''Prospect'' articles by David Fleming

* ttps://www.feasta.org/documents/wells/contents.html?two/fleming.htm 2003 - Before The Wells Run Dry - "Building a Lean Economy for a fuel-poor future"
2006 - Full footage of Fleming's Schumacher College Earth Talk: “Lean Energy: A Practical Guide to the Energy Descent”

2007 - Transition Culture interview - "The Transition to Sustainable Resilience"

2007 - Cultivate's Sustainable Community Conference - "The Community Lecture"

2009 - Transition Towns Conference - "Wild Economics, Wolves, Resilience and Spirit - a study in interdependence"

2009 - Video interview on the subject of peak oil, in Fleming's flat in Hampstead

2010 - Video interview with Fleming on TEQs, after Swedish Parliament presentation
(from SVT)
2010 - David Fleming's last interview (audio), in which he discusses his forthcoming book ''Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It''

Online tributes paid upon Fleming's death

2011 - All Party Parliamentary report into TEQs

2015 - Academic paper in the ''Carbon Management'' journal advocating for Fleming's TEQs system

2016 - ''Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It'' - Fleming's book, published posthumously by Chelsea Green Publishing
(
footage from the multi-year book tour

2016 - ''Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy'' - the paperback drawn from Fleming's ''Lean Logic'', published by Chelsea Green Publishing

2017 - "Community, Place and Play: A Post-Market Economics" - Schumacher College's course on Fleming's work and legacy

2020 - ''LeanLogic.online'' - Freely-accessible reworking of Fleming's ''Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It'' as an interactive website

2020 - ''The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?'' - feature film about Fleming's foresight and enduring influence

2020 - ''Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time'' - Sterling College's extensive online program based in Fleming's work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleming, David 1940 births English environmentalists Green Party of England and Wales politicians Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford Alumni of Cranfield University Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London 2010 deaths Ecological economists