Lean Logic

Dr. David Fleming (1940 – 2010) was a visionary thinker and writer who played significant roles in the genesis of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement, and the New Economics Foundation, as well as chairing the Soil Association. He was also one of the early whistle-blowers on oil depletion and designer of the influential TEQs carbon/energy rationing system. He read Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford, and later earned an MBA and then an MSc and PhD in economics (in 1988). These enabled him to better engage with and confound the mainstream, in support of his true passion and genius: understanding that diverse and mysterious thing “community.” Lean Logic was the work of over thirty years.Shaun Chamberlin has been involved with the Transition Network since its inception, co-founding Transition Town Kingston and authoring the movement’s second book, The Transition Timeline. He was also one of Extinction Rebellion’s first arrestees, chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, and has spoken at venues ranging from Occupy camps to national parliaments. In exploring the cultural narratives charting society’s course he has written and edited diverse publications, including bringing his late mentor David Fleming's lifework Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It to posthumous publication, and creating from it the paperback Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival, and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. He is also a consulting scholar at Sterling College, and lead writer of the film The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation? His website is www.darkoptimism.org.Jonathon Porritt co-chaired the UK Green Party from 1980-83, and acted as the director of Friends of the Earth from 1984-1990. In 1996 he co-founded Forum for the Future and was Chair of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission from 2000-2009, receiving a CBE for services to environmental protection. He has written eight books, including Capitalism As If The World Matters (2007) and The World We Made (2013).

Choice-"The late author, who passed away suddenly in 2010, was a prominent UK Green Party theorist and advocate. This book—thoughtfully edited by his protégé Chamberlin—represents the distillation of a life's work. Fleming is best known for introducing the economic concept of "Tradable Energy Quotas" (TEQs), which aims to plot the means for a vast reduction of carbon emissions and energy consumption. Even though the book is laid out in a dictionary format, it is best viewed as a series of interconnected essays. The overall goal is to detail the self-destructiveness of the market economy's dependence on sustained growth and at the same time paint a picture of a much less dynamic economy of the future. The notion of "lean logic," i.e., thinking small and local, exemplifies the public policies that he predicted will emerge pursuant to the implosion of the market economy. Fleming claims an optimistic vision, yet the stark overhaul of existing social ties he foresees has a strong chiliastic bent. His idea of the market economy is the polar opposite of the recent work of Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (CH, Oct'16, 54-0926). Nonetheless, this is a welcome work with a distinctive and well-articulated point of view. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.”