Kirkpatrick Sale

Kirkpatrick Sale is a widely recognized formulator and early proponent of the notion of “bioregionalism.” His development of this concept in his books, lectures, and regular radio broadcasts fueled the ever-growing interest in a local approach to the solving of growing political, economic, and environmental problems.

A scholar and author, his many books have explored radical decentralism, environmentalism, Ludditism, and technology, including Human Scale (1980); Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (1985); The Columbian Legacy: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (1990); The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement 1962-1992 (1993); Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age (1995); After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (2006); and Human Scale Revisited (2017). Early books written as a free-lance journalist are The Land and People of Ghana and SDS which describes the 1960s youth activist organization Students for a Democratic Society.

In 2004 Sale and members of the Second Vermont Republic formed the Middlebury Institute which studies separatism, secession, and self-determination. He is currently the director of the Institute.