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Schumacher\’s Small is Beautiful

I\’ve always been rather puzzled by hagiographies for this particular book, like this one.

Yes, OK, small is beautiful, appropriate technology is a good idea (who would use a hammer to put in a screw if a screwdriver were available?) and so on.

But from my memory of the book there\’s a huge great big section telling us all that we should run the world on coal. For EF was the Chief Economist for the National Coal Board and he wasn\’t going to not talk his own book in his own book, was he?

The bit that puzzles me is why this section of the book just isn\’t mentioned in polite environmental cicrles, while the book as a whole is held up as a blurprint for how we should all live.

Most puzzling.

2 thoughts on “Schumacher\’s Small is Beautiful”

  1. It’s the panic reaction that costs the money, not the radiation itself. You can take bus tours round Chernobyl.
    There’s also the issue of nomenclature. Survivors of nuclear disasters go on to build the most amazing export economy. Victims of nuclear disasters suffer very high levels of family breakdown, truancy, drug abuse…

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