Obituary for David Fleming

by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 21, 2010 | All Posts, Articles

Originally published in The Ecologist on the 21st December 2010

The online version of the article can be found here

Dr. David Fleming, a visionary Green thinker and one of the key whistleblowers on peak oil, has died aged 70. He was a significant figure in the genesis of the UK Green Party, the New Economics Foundation and the Transition Towns movement. His legacy also includes TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas), the energy rationing scheme currently under consideration by the UK Government, his influential book Lean Logic and the real delight and inspiration he gave so freely to all who met him.

David was born on the 2nd January 1940 at Chiddingfold, Surrey, to Norman Bell Beatie Fleming, a Harley Street eye surgeon, and Joan Margaret Fleming, an award-winning crime writer.

After reading History at Trinity College, Oxford from 1959 to 1963, he went on to work in manufacturing, marketing and financial PR before earning an MBA from Cranfield University in 1968.

Despite being an avowed Conservative voter, he was a significant figure in the development of the UK Ecology/Green Party — his flat in Hampstead serving as its party office in the late 70s and early 80s — and urged his contemporaries to learn the language and concepts of economics in order to confound the arguments of their opponents. He practiced what he preached, and in 1979 began studies in economics at Birkbeck College, University of London, completing an MSc in 1983 and his PhD in 1988.