Richard Douthwaite (1942-2011) Richard Douthwaite was an economist and writer with a special interest in climate and energy issues and local economic development.  His first book, The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet was published in 1992 and was re-issued in an extended and up-dated second edition in 1999. It explores why the present economic system is dependent on economic growth and the effects that the resulting pursuit of growth has had on the environment and society. His other major book, Short Circuit (1996) gives dozens of examples of currency, banking, energy and food production systems which communities can use to make themselves less dependent on an increasingly unstable world economy. His The Ecology of Money (1999) calls for different currencies for different purposes and for changes in the way money is put into circulation so that a stable, sustainable economy can be achieved. He edited Before the Wells Run Dry (2003), a study of the transition to renewable energy in the light of climate change and oil and gas depletion and To Catch the Wind, (2004), a report on how communities can invest in wind energy. He was a co-founder of Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, the Dublin-based international network of people who believe that the world's sustainability problems are due to the use of dysfunctional systems and are trying to develop better ones. He was co-editor of the Feasta Review, which carries cutting-edge thinking on sustainability issues.  He led a recently-completed research project which was commissioned from Feasta by the Irish Government’s Environmental Protection Agency into the effects that very much higher energy prices might have on the various sectors of Irish life. In spring 2006 he co-wrote a report for the South African Department of Agriculture on the ways in which biofuel production might affect the two farming sectors in that country – the commercial farms and the subsistence producers. The report recommended a development strategy designed to maximise the benefits accruing in the rural areas. He acted as economic adviser to the Global Commons Institute (London) from 1993 to 2005 during which time GCI developed the Contraction and Convergence approach to dealing with greenhouse gas emissions which has now been backed by many countries. He subsequently helped Feasta devise the Cap and Share framework for emissions reduction. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Plymouth and contributed the economic content to the Master’s course in Theology and the Environment at Dalgan Park, Navan. He contributed lectures to courses at four parts of the National University of Ireland (Dublin, Maynooth, Cork and Galway) and at the universities of London (Goldsmiths and LSE), Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Leicester, Newcastle, Manchester, Uppsala, Malardalen, Stockholm (KTH) and Budapest.