So, after years of work from me, and decades from David, the day is finally here – the official publication date for his astonishing lifework (and my paperback version of it)!!

In truth, demand has already been such that the distributors have been struggling to keep up, but they’re ramping things up now, and the real promotional push starts here 🙂

Last week I circulated an email with full details of the books, the early reviews, tour events etc, but since two additional dates have already been added since, I thought I’d post an updatable listing of my tour here:

Fri 2nd-Sun 4th Sept – Dark Mountain Basecamp festival, Embercombe, Devon

Sat 10th Sept – Small Is Beautiful festival, with Natalie Bennett, Andrew Simms and others. Centre for Alternative Technology, Powys, mid-Wales

Sat 17th Sept – 9am-5pm – Towards a Localised Future: A New Economy Convergence, with Helena Norberg-Hodge, Molly Scott Cato, Michael H Shuman… Friends House, Camden, London

Mon 19th Sept – 11:30am-1:30pm – “Could Brexit lead to the rediscovery of culture grounded in place?”, celebration of the books with Jonathon Porritt. Trinity College, Oxford University

Weds 21st Sept – 6:30pm-8:30pm – The launch party at Daunt Books Chelsea, London

Mon 26th Sept – 7pm-9pm – Studio guest of Dave Hampton on MarlowFM, 97.5‘s weekly environment show

Weds 12th Oct – 8pm-10pm – Schumacher College Earth Talk on David Fleming, with Rob Hopkins. Dartington, Totnes

Thurs 20th Oct – evening – Talk at Global Co-operation House, Willesden, London (more details to come)

Mon 6th-Fri 10th Feb 2017 – Schumacher College week-long course on David’s work: Community, place and play: a post-market economics, with Mark Boyle, Rob Hopkins and Stephan Harding

Last week the wonderful Brianne Goodspeed of Chelsea Green Publishing interviewed me on my late mentor David Fleming and the astonishing gift he left to the world.

His sudden death in 2010 left behind his great unpublished work—Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It—a masterpiece more than thirty years in the making.

In it, Fleming examines the consequences of an economy that destroys the very foundations—ecological, economic, and cultural—upon which it is built. But his core focus is on what could follow its inevitable demise: his compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to.

And since his death, I have edited out a paperback version—Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy—to concisely present his rare insights and uniquely enjoyable writing style in a more conventional read-it-front-to-back format. Chelsea Green are simultaneously launching both on September 8th, but since I have just received my first copies, I believe some bookshops may have them already…

For more about the man, the books, and the hippo, read on!

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On the eve of the #Brexit referendum, I have found myself struck by the juxtaposition of two exceptional pieces of writing which run somewhat deeper than the ‘lowest common denominator’ debate running in the mainstream media.

It wasn’t immediately clear to me which way I would vote, but reading these nuanced pieces – which draw out sensible reasons for considering both sides of the argument – helped me to make a decision.

The first is this piece by Giles Fraser in The Guardian. I believe Fraser has declared that he will vote ‘Out’, yet unlike many ‘Brexiteers’ his piece makes a crucial argument in favour of free movement for people: Read more »

We just sent out our Fleming Policy Centre newsletter, with reflections on the Paris climate summit. Bottom line: it’s not good. In the words of the author Naomi Klein, “Our leaders have shown themselves willing to set our world on fire.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream media seem to be doing their best to put the world to sleep again. One excitable front-page headline I noticed in The Observer proclaimed:

The same article concluded on p9, with a quiet mention that: “there will be no legal obligation for countries to cut emissions”.

In truth, the good news is found elsewhere, with the ever-swelling numbers of ordinary people realising that our future is being destroyed in our name. In the print edition of the paper though, one tiny voice of sanity did sneak in to a sidebox, as climate scientist James Hansen commented on the agreement: “It’s a fraud really, a fake”.

But if we are so dismissive of what global politics is producing, then it is perhaps fair to ask what we wish to see instead. Read more »

I am pleased and proud to be able to mark the 5th anniversary of my friend David Fleming‘s death with the news that his life’s work is approaching publication.

I believe that a beautiful way to honour those we love after their death is to keep alive in the world that which was best in them. In David’s case, there was no clearer way to do so than to see his masterwork Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It reach the audience that deserves it.

As Rob Hopkins and Jonathon Porritt explain in their forewords (yet to be released), it is a book that has been hugely influential even before its publication!

The copy-edited manuscript is now with the publishers ahead of its summer release, but I thought I would mark today by sharing the new cover design (I love it!) and my introductory preface:

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I am currently hunkered down working on a project close to my heart, editing my late friend and colleague Dr. David Fleming‘s incredible life’s work Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It, for its publication by Chelsea Green later this year.

I did though hear about the pope’s interesting new encyclical. It’s well worth a browse (and do check out Rap News’ take), but here are a few of my favourite lines:

Lately we’ve seen the president of the World Bank and ‘business leaders from the very carbon-intensive industries’ pushing for carbon pricing (taxes or ‘carbon trading’ schemes). This is intended to demonstrate their deep change of heart and determination to start seriously addressing climate change, but to my eyes it is a deeply cynical, pernicious attempt to channel the passion of those deeply-committed to action on climate change into mechanisms that will only maintain the suicidal status quo.

Which is why I poured all my experience of ten years’ work on the topic into this peer-reviewed academic paper, which I believe demolishes the case for carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes as the way forward, and shows a clear, well-researched alternative (though it took almost as much effort as writing my book!).
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This is an excerpt from a longer video interview Rhonda Fabian conducted with Shaun Chamberlin at the New Story Summit in Findhorn, Scotland as part of a Findhorn Foundation documentary initiative.

Originally published in the Kosmos Journal.

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Rhonda Fabian: Shaun, please tell me what Dark Optimism means to you.

Dark Optimism is a widely misunderstood term. I get a lot of people coming up to me saying, “Are you feeling dark today, or optimistic?” That’s not quite what I mean. Dark Optimism means being unashamedly positive about the kind of world we could create, but unashamedly realistic about how far we are from doing that right now.

So it’s not that sort of bright shiny optimism, which I can find quite frustrating. It’s more like, “Well everything isn’t fine actually, you know?” It’s an ability to look at the more difficult aspects of where we are and what we’re doing, whilst also retaining a sort of deep faith in human potential. And also drawing on the deeper questions of why we’re really here. And does the state of the world in any way challenge our purpose in being here, or make that impossible? I don’t think it does.
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