Hazel Henderson, a self-study environmentalist and futuristic who became an apostle for green economy and socially responsible investment and spread the slogan “think globally and act locally,” has died. It — at her home in St. Augustine, Florida on Sunday. She was 89 years old.
Linda C. Crompton, CEO of Ethical Markets, a media company founded by Henderson in 2004, said the cause was a complication of skin cancer. Not only to make it, but to make a profit, “said to promote. All stakeholders. “
Mocking traditional economists and gaining a reputation as a crank in some areas, she not only embraces material success based on the cash value of the goods and services produced each year, but also as a measure of prosperity. I tried to redefine Gross National Product. Includes health, social, education, and other benchmarks, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared in 1968 after being briefed by Mr. Henderson.
In a telephone interview, consumer activist Ralph Nader said, “She seeks qualitative measurements suitable for people focused on the democratic economy, as opposed to the main monetized standards of the corporate economy. I worked hard on that. ” The entire international civil community. “
Environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben described Henderson as “a visionary economist” on Twitter.
Henderson called himself an “independent self-employed futurist” and, like the founder of the country, raised a warning flag about the factionism caused by party politics. She wrote nine books. Perhaps most notable is her “Politics in the Age of the Sun” (1981), where she tells us that the environmental movement will accept sustainable energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
In the New York Times Book Review, political scientist Langdon Winner reviewed “Politics in the Age of the Sun” and named Henderson “Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics” by EF Schumacher’s “Competent”. I called it a successor. When people have problems “(1973).
Winner said that Henderson wrote “things that are important to all of us in a vibrant, well-informed, and deliberately ridiculous style,” and it’s hard to ponder. “
Henderson also wrote “Ethical Markets: Green Economy Growth” (2007), which later became the basis for the PBS television series.
Her style, intentionally or unintentionally, resented the members of the Academy, with her conclusion that “economics is a form of brain damage” and the professional agenda she said “God of economics”. The purpose was to “deprive the right.”
“The beneficial” invisible hand “conceived by Adam Smith can even be said to be a clumsy and careless” invisible hand “that tramples on social, human and environmental values,” she said. I am writing.
Henderson’s own professional evolution was the story of modern Cinderella. A British-born high school graduate who wasn’t interested in going to college, she moved to the United States and was baptized by the environmental movement with the ash erupting from garbage burning in New York. Incinerator.
Forced to bathe the baby daughter daily just to get rid of the soot patina, she was rejected by an indifferent official when she complained about the pollution to the city hall. Environmental group. Among other innovations, their organization has turned an ambiguous measure, the Air Pollution Index, into a fixture for daily weather forecasts.
Jean Hazel Mustard was born on March 27, 1933 in Bristol, Somerset, England. Her father, Kenneth, was a businessman. She remembered her mother, Dorothy Mae (Jesse Man) Mustard, as an environmentalist who raised fruits and vegetables and raised chickens. (Hazel later became a favorite recycled product for vegetarians, including toilet paper, in line with Scottish planner Patrick Geddes’ proclamation of “think globally and act locally” in the early 20th century. It is.)
“From my experience growing up in the family of a typical patriarch in Bristol, the British slave trade port, women were trained to be donors and men to be dominant robbers. “She wrote last year.Website radix, In itself is called a “radical middle-way think tank”. “My mother was kept invoiced by my father, a strong executive, who forced her to make money to pay our grocery invoices.”
She graduated from Clifton School for Girls High School in 1950. She worked as a telephone operator, saleswoman, and hotel clerk. She and she married Carter Henderson, who she contributed to The Wall Street Journal in 1957, and moved to New York the same year. She became a naturalized citizen in 1962 and she emigrated to Florida in the mid-1970s.
Her survivors include Alexandra Leslie Camille Henderson and her grandson, a daughter from that marriage who divorced in 1981.
In 1996, she shared the Boston Research Center’s Global Citizen Award with A. Perez Eskibel of Argentina, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980. That same year, she married Alan F. Kay, an internet pioneer who founded the computerized Wall Street. Trading concerns, and who undertook the creation of her ethical market. Together, they also set up a World Commission to fund the United Nations. Kay died in 2016.
She wrote for the Harvard Business Review in the 1960s and 70s. She was named “Citizen of the Year” by the New York County Medical Society in 1967. She was a Regent Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She chaired Nature Maintenance at the University of California, Berkeley. She also advised her on the US Technical Evaluation Office, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Science Foundation.
She remained self-employed, she told Tampa Bay Tribune in 2005.
Like that of many Futurists, her success was based on savvy intuition. It was also partly based on the fact that so much time has passed that most people forget what she once predicted, or that it hasn’t happened yet.
For example, in 1982 she was asked by the Times to predict what the Millennium would look like.
“There is no doubt that this will return to a more human-scale society,” Henderson said. “It’s more efficient and will do things locally. It doesn’t make sense to buy Illinois-baked wonder bread. In the future, we plan to share capital goods such as lawnmowers, freezers, and homes. . “
Was she wrong about her predictions? “It’s just about timing,” Nader said. “She was an optimist, so she thought earlier than anyone else.”