Traditionalist anti-modernism is not what made Small Is Beautiful a success, however, nor even Gurdjieffian spirituality. What was most appreciated were the elements of the book that argued for conservation of natural resources – arguments that helped launch the Green movement that was to characterize much of the late Western twentieth century. “Already,” wrote [Ernst Friedrich] Schumacher, “there is overwhelming evidence that the great self-balancing system of nature is becoming increasingly unbalanced.” “Infinite growth in a finite environment is an obvious impossibility.” “Non-renewable goods must be used only if they are indispensable, and then only with the greatest care and the most meticulous care for conservation.” These views derive not from Traditionalism, but from Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner’s version of Theosophy. This had inspired the Soil Association, a British group that Schumacher joined in 1949 and that was one of the earliest bodies to press for what would later be called an ecological approach to agriculture. Schumacher’s views also derive from British industrial politics: he spent the latter part of his life working as an economic advisor for the British National Coal Board, the state-owned holding company for the British coal industry, and in the 1960s had been assigned the task of marshaling arguments against the British government’s proposed closure of loss-making coal mines. His principal argument was that by the 1980s oil reserves would be starting to run out and coal mining would then return to its earlier importance.
– Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (2004), p. 213