Natural Capitalism

May 31, 2008 Willy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment, non-fiction

I chose this book for my reading list this quarter because it is one of the most widely discussed books on the transition from our current unsustainable economic system to a more sustainable system. Natural Capitalism is listed amongst the books on Evergreen’s sustainability webpage, so I thought it was important in my path to understanding the various aspects of sustainability. It was then so unsatisfying then that this book is so significantly flawed. The author’s believe that the transition w...more I chose this book for my reading list this quarter because it is one of the most widely discussed books on the transition from our current unsustainable economic system to a more sustainable system. Natural Capitalism is listed amongst the books on Evergreen’s sustainability webpage, so I thought it was important in my path to understanding the various aspects of sustainability. It was then so unsatisfying then that this book is so significantly flawed. The author’s believe that the transition will be awesome and profitable that, by golly, everyone and every business will want to help out. The author’s maintain a position that the market will drive this transition to a sustainable market without unwanted and unwarranted government intervention.
Their preface states: 'We believe the world stands at the threshold of basic changes in the conditions of business. Companies that ignore the message of natural capitalism do so at their peril....(We) show that the move towards radical resource productivity and natural capitalism is beginning to feel inevitable rather than merely possible.... If at times we lean more to enthusiasm than reportage, it is because we can see the tremendous array of possibilities for healing the most intransigent problems of our time'.
According to the authors, David Brower, the American environmentalist and mountaineer, once proposed a user's manual for those buying an Earth. 'This planet has been delivered in perfect working condition, and cannot be replaced. Please don't adjust the thermostat or the atmosphere'. The author’s do recognize the need for change from the unsustainable course we are on but believe that the answers lie in technology, if we but adopt what the authors call 'Natural Capitalism' - 'the next industrial revolution'. The question is do the author’s really believe in this position or are they cajoling us to act. They call their approach natural capitalism because it's based on the principle that business can be good for the environment. If natural capitalism continues to blossom, so much money and resources will be saved that societies will be able to focus on issues such as housing.
Admittedly this is an informative, visionary and thought provoking book that I would recommend. It is their faith in a technological solution to what I have come to view as a cultural and political problem, that I take issue with. They do have a plan that seems en face, very plausible and hopeful. It seems that they really do believe that the carrot approach will work without needing a stick at all. Natural Capitalism is a assemblage of successful entrepreneurial anecdotes of how more service can be gotten from less materials and less energy. In Natural Capitalism the authors expand the range of anecdotal information, gloss them with science, and extrapolate diminishing dollar costs into the distant future. In this rosy future there will be so much energy saving that oil will scarcely sell for $5 a barrel. To arrive at this sate of affairs they make some assumptions cast with an incredible reach. One example is asking the reader to interpret generalities such as '92% less energy use ' or '100% saving', or the claim that electricity from photo-voltaic devices is of 'higher quality' (p97), or that 'combined cycle gas turbines are not subject to Carnot's Law', or phrases like 'useful work extracted ... to more than 90% of the original fuel energy'? I asked someone more familiar with energy consumption statistics and she scoffed that the author was forgetting the laws of thermodynamics. Since Hawken is a physicist, this seems problematic.
They surmise that is waste was eliminated we would have a raw energy surplus. Those of us that have kept track of our time and then made (or tried to make) adjustments to wast less time, recognize the difficulties in eliminating wast. The technique is simple, recent technological developments are reported which can cut the energy and materials needs by half. Then new ways of doing things can cut the need for that energy by a further half (half of a half equals a quarter), then, since we have cut some inputs to a quarter, other economies follow. This is a very dangerous argument. Here is a quote from page 244:
"Over the next half-century, even if global economy expanded by 6 - 8 fold, the rate of releasing carbon by burning of fossil fuels could simultaneously decrease by anywhere from one third to nine-tenths below current rate. This is because of the multiplicative effect of four kinds of actions. Switching to natural gas and renewable energy, as fast as Shell Oil planners consider likely, would cut by one half to three quarters the fossil-fuel.”
The allure of this argument is clear- we don’t have to change we just have to think smarter and develop more and better technologies. Like Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist they use a process that Daniel Sarewitz criticizes as attempting to “support a view where appropriate action is determined by scientific inquiry.” Sarewitz explores the problems inherent with using science to articulate, define and solve environmental controversies requires scientists to focus on reducing risks from uncertainty. Hawins and the Lovin’s blithely reduce these risks by painting a very rosy future. Interestingly enough, in looking at the book, written nearly a decade ago, I did find the book outdated, particularly with regard to automobile technology.
In viewing this book from another angle, I have another concern. In economics, the theory goes that when you get more from less, you take advantage of the slack, this is know as the rebound effect. Common sense tells me that human greed with take advantage of this rebound effect and capture any possible savings.
The many happy solutions to energy problems did not convince me of their solution paradigm; in fact, I found much of the book redundant. I absolutely appreciate the author’s for their optimism; I hope that corporations, business and consumers drive the revolution for change. I allow for the possibility that change can come from a utopian and peaceful adoption of appropriate technologies. I can understand that many students of environmentalism would hold this book with reverence and hope. Perhaps it is too cynical of me but I maintain that the revolution for a sustainable planet will only occur when we reduce what we want to what we need. And even then, it might be too little-too late.
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Aug 26, 2007 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Capitalism is probably here to stay. While there are alternatives that can work on a local level, I remain unconvinced that these can either be dispersed widely enough or "scaled up" enough to supplant capitalism as a whole. So the question becomes: how can we make it less damaging -- to our environment? -- to our spirit?

The answer proposed in this book is, simply put, to appeal to the logic of capitalism: i.e. profits. Being good makes sense because it makes money.

Well, almost. While their desc...more

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Apr 09, 2008 ValerieLyn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: eco-folks

Shelves: books-i-ll-never-finish

Not quick or easy (nor off-puttingly technical), but this book has a ton of great information about what it means to overhaul society to make it greener and how doing do would make it a less anti-social society.
Best read over tea, and not necessarily in order.
Generally, there is a specter haunting non fiction, namely that the authors take about 35% more pages than they need to expound their ideas. I want to scream "I GET IT! LET'S MOVE ON!" but no one is listening.
I'm sure there were some excell...more

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Feb 22, 2008 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book changed my life and set me on my current path, which I hope will be a career in corporate sustainability. Basically, this is a primer for the next industrial revolution which we are currently entering and seeks to change the paradigm which says sustainability and a good bottom line for countries/corporations are mutually exclusive. In fact, it is now emerging to be just the opposite. The Lovines and Hawkin were prophetic in their predictioins, as we are now seeing what they spelled out...more

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Feb 28, 2009 sdw rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment, food-justice, non-fiction

Libertarians will love this book.

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.” – Wendell Berry.

Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins open the book with this quote, which I agree with. Where Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins and I disagree is the path to getting there.

What is Natural Capita...more Libertarians will love this book.

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.” – Wendell Berry.

Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins open the book with this quote, which I agree with. Where Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins and I disagree is the path to getting there.

What is Natural Capitalism? Well, it has a lot to do with Natural Capital. You see, Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins want to correct Marx’s notions that natural resources and ecosystems are raw products which through the lands of labor are turned into commodities which produce wealth. Rather, natural resources and healthy ecosystems are themselves a form of capital – natural capital. They provide services necessary to the production of all wealth and they cannot be replaced.

Because of this, Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins believe that it is in the self-interest of businesses to preserve, conserve, and restore natural capital. They believe we are on the cusp of a revolution that will transform the world as much as the industrial revolution and that revolution is not at all like a revolution envisioned by Marx, but rather a revolution in natural Capital. This is the revolution that takes place as businesses realize the importance of investing in green technologies, the importance of asking for government regulation of the industry, even the importance of socio-economic justice.

Indeed, they tell us, “in a few decades, historians may write a history of our times that goes something like this: Now that the private sector has taken its proper place as the main implementer of sustainable practices, simply because they work better and cost less, the 1990s and 1980s approach of micromanagement by intensive government regulation is only a bad memory” (320).

Forgive me, but this sounds naïve. Does the corporate capital business model really have that much foresight? Is it rational to that extent? Will it ever sacrifice its own short term profit for the long term benefit of humanity? To what extent does this model depend on the good will, the good heart, the good morals and intentions of the world elites? Indeed, perhaps that is why the book is written as a utopic vision to convince the world’s elite who control those businesses that this is exactly the revolution at which they ought to be at the vanguard, in order to reap profits and also assuage guilt.

I say this not to attack green entrepreneurs or small local business owners. I just think its naïve to think that Shell will on its own realize its better to be ecologically friendly (rather than simply appear ecologically friendly). But let’s take a closer look at one of the examples they give for how this process unfolds…

“When the African writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and seven of his colleagues were hanged by the Nigerian military dictatorship after being convicted in a kangaroo court for leading the protests against the environmental degradation in Ogoniland caused by multinational petroleum companies, Shell stations in Germany were burned to the ground, boycotts in Holland slashed sales, and employees in London were chastised by family and friends. Since that time, Shell has begun to reexamine all its racial, economic, and environmental policies.”

Now contrast the vision of change they give above to the statement with which they end the book:

” Natural capitalism is not about fomenting social upheaval. On the contrary, that is the consequence that will surely arise if fundamental social and environmental problems are not responsibly addressed. Natural capitalism is about choices we can make that can start to tip economic and social outcomes in positive directions. And it is already occurring- because it is necessary, possible, and practical” (322).
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Mar 01, 2013 Lage von Dissen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Capitalism as many know is an economic system based on private ownership of capital and the means of production, where the creation of goods and services are designed to make a profit. What most people don't know is that this system as its been implemented (and under-regulated) is completely unsustainable as it promotes the production of consumable products (rather than re-usable or longer lasting products), a high level of waste production, and environmental depletion in general. When we "borro...more Capitalism as many know is an economic system based on private ownership of capital and the means of production, where the creation of goods and services are designed to make a profit. What most people don't know is that this system as its been implemented (and under-regulated) is completely unsustainable as it promotes the production of consumable products (rather than re-usable or longer lasting products), a high level of waste production, and environmental depletion in general. When we "borrow" environmental capital and never pay it back (e.g. mining, fossil fuels, fresh water, etc.), this environmental price is not appropriately reflected in the price of a product. This is perhaps the biggest failure of capitalism as we use it today. What this book addresses is how we can integrate the idea of capitalism and sustainability through several methods including but not limited to: environmental foot-print taxation (including carbon taxes, etc.), and changing from a consumable goods economy to a services economy. By taxing corporations for their environmental foot-print, they can no longer use natural capital as if its a free or cheap resource. This means that in order for the prices of products to remain competitive, companies would instead compete for reducing environmental foot-prints to increasing their profit. We know how innovative companies can be when it comes to making a profit, and if their profit was at stake with this new legislation, they would compete to improve truly "green" technologies. Over time companies would find ways to save money by doing things in a more sustainable manner. As for transforming a consumable goods-based economy to a service-based economy, we would have products re-used, recycled, and designed with a "lease" in mind. That is, we would design cars, electronics, etc. so that rather than using it til' it breaks and throwing it away, we use a product for a certain amount of time and have an industry designed to repair and re-use many of these materials. People would never buy a refrigerator or automobile, rather they would lease it. At the end of the lease, when it is returned to the company that produced it, they would repair it or harvest the materials for new products. This dramatically reduces waste and thus minimizes the use of natural capital. Furthermore, by using renewable energy as our primary (if not only) source of energy, again we have a sustainable model that will work for posterity. In a nutshell, we can have capitalism as well as sustainability, as long as we implement legislation that supports a "natural capitalism" business model. The book is a bit' of a dry read, but provides many examples of how the industry is changing, and what needs to be done if we are to have any hope of maintaining a quality of life that first-world nations have become accustomed to.(less)

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Apr 22, 2012 Linda Riebel rated it 5 of 5 stars

As an environmental educator and concerned citizen, I’m frequently disheartened about our seemingly conscious destruction of our planet. This it was a truly exciting eye-opener to read this missive from three leading thinkers about how industry, which many of us think of as the bane of the earth, can reverse course and make the change we need. All you have to do is read the daily paper to know that politicians won’t do it! The book is full of dozens of creative and inspiring examples of people r...more

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Feb 12, 2012 Don Shelby rated it 3 of 5 stars

The world's economy is based on natural resources, the extraction of them and the making and selling and buying of those things which come from nature. As a result, the environment is being despoiled, and resources are diminishing. The authors suggest a new theory of economics and that is to place a value on that which comes from nature. That which has cash value is preserved and carefully used. It is the basis for an economic sustainability model that will help manufacturers, allow capitalism t...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-top-50-sustainability-books

One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.

Natural Capitalism suggests that the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution - one that promises to transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its role in shaping our future. The authors describe a future in which business and environmental interests increasingly overlap, and in which companie...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Justin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I learned so much from this book that it is impossible to record in one review. To some extent I already knew or knew of many theories and approaches outlined in Natural Capitalism, however, finding it all in one coherent and interesting presentation was refreshing.

It has clearly refreshed and renewed my desire to study further system engineering approaches to civic problems.

More review details at: http://jritch.net/2008/12/29/finally-...

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Jun 30, 2010 Nicole McCann rated it 5 of 5 stars

i read paul hawken's book "the ecology of commerce" while i was on vacation in thailand during a break in japan. i am such a nerd about this topic that i was underlining and taking notes, that's right, while on vacation in thailand! of course i was going to read his follow up book, "natural capitalism," duh! this book is quite dense and each chapter covers a different sector of the economy and natural resource area and talks thoroughly about what needs to happen, what's happening, and what the r...more

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Dec 05, 2006 Ross Venook rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: folks interested in sustainable business and greentech

Not terribly easy to read, but full of vision and inspiring tales of companies that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

For a preview (or the whole book, if you're a cheap student) you can download pdf's chapter by chapter at [http://www.natcap.org/].

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May 22, 2012 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I expected a lot from this book and, as is normal with expectations, they were not met. Not that the book isn't good but maybe I should have read it 10 years ago when I first picked it up. Time has a way of making some ideas seem dated, even if these ideas are still important. Tunneling through prices and looking at design as a whole rather than an accumulation of individual steps is important to keep in mind. Optimizing pieces of a puzzle on their own doesn't mean the whole is efficient. All go...more

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May 22, 2009 Xiaosen Xie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book should be required reading for all econ and business majors. However, humanity is already way past the point of turning back the tide of environmental destruction. The damage is still being done, and the only thing we can hope to do now is lessen the impact of this damage.
Currently, the majority of environmental destruction is being done in the third world (thanks mainly to the greed of first world countries, or, rather, our insatiable need to maintain our current standard of living)....more

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Feb 11, 2013 Arty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: design-thinking, global-ecology, economics

Paints a pretty compelling picture of a possible future where capitalism and ecological stewardship are not only compatible but function symbiotically - the picture is compelling not just because it's nice to image there being a non-eschatological future, but because they use existing, real-world examples of systems and processes that need only be extended in order for that future to come about.

The book is pretty personally important to me, enough that I can imagine bringing at least a part of t...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Adam Kranz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Adam by: Jeff Clark

Shelves: dystopia-utopia, mudd-library, non-fiction, school-reading, the-problem-of-civilization

I just skimmed this book to find the essence of its argument and pick out excerpts for my Jensen tutorial. The main thesis is that natural capitalism can do things better for people and the planet in the long term. The premises of natural capitalism are of course intuitive and appealing. However, the book ends up being a bundle of great individual ideas masquerading as a plan for saving the whole economy/society. The ideas on offer could and would be picked up by individual entrepeneurs and make...more I just skimmed this book to find the essence of its argument and pick out excerpts for my Jensen tutorial. The main thesis is that natural capitalism can do things better for people and the planet in the long term. The premises of natural capitalism are of course intuitive and appealing. However, the book ends up being a bundle of great individual ideas masquerading as a plan for saving the whole economy/society. The ideas on offer could and would be picked up by individual entrepeneurs and make them a bundle of money while saving the planet and helping people. Hawken and the Lovins seem to believe that that's all they can or need to do (which is fine, if that's what they want to accomplish).

Yet their unbridled optimism pushes them to go further and assert that business owners who don't adopt natural capitalist principles will be left behind by the new wave; that the economy will simply shift on its own in the same way that it shifted from coal to oil or into industrial capitalism. I looked through the whole book and came to the conclusion that this is simply an article of faith: they never discuss its likelihood or any evidence about the question. Since natural capitalism is predicated on system-level design and shifts in high-level political policy, this is a startling omission. Individual business owners might make some money using resources more efficiently, but natural capitalism won't come about unless systemic change occurs, and this book offers nothing but faith and optimism about that. They don't even exhort readers to lobby for those system level changes – they seem to think that would be a waste of time, since it's inevitable anyway.

That said, the evidence they marshal is rich and great, and they really do have some great specific concepts and ideas in here. It's just framed in a really idiosyncratic way that makes it seem like more than it can really be.

It was also interesting to me that Hawken just treats the course of history as this series of brilliant innovations that solve engineering and distribution problems, coupled with all these bumbling errors and clumsinesses that cause all these mishaps and make the whole thing fail to achieve its real potential and true goal (which he asserts is to make everyone happier or whatever). What's interesting is that he doesn't ignore social inequality and racism and these issues - he clearly cares about them deeply. But he doesn't ever engage in a class analysis or something that would show that these problems are caused by some to benefit themselves at expense of others. This precludes him from addressing the fact that those who benefit might try to influence the growth of natural capitalism away from the social and environmental values he sees it creating towards a more or less sustainable version of today's social order.(less)

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Sep 06, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

from the library, hardcover, c1999

TOC
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
The Next Industrial Revolution
Reinventing the Wheels: Hypercars and Neighborhoods
Waste Not
Making the World
Building Blocks
Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier
Muda, Service, and Flow
Capital Gains
Nature's Filaments
Food for Life
Aqueous Solutions
Climate: Making Sense and Making Money
Making Markets Work
Human Capitalism
Once Upon a Planet
Notes
References
Index

Booklist Reviews (from the library computer)

Hawken...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Amaury Sautour rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-economics-environment

If you are already advanced in the process of looking for information about what's going on with the environment and what kind of solutions can and/or should be put in place - or should I say: if you already are a more open-minded, wiser and better person who cares about the outside world? - there is no need to read this book. It will likely state the obvious to you.
Rather, with some of its passages demonstrating how good can be accomplished in the world, I wish there were an english version of...more

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Jul 04, 2008 Mason Wiebe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Written in 1999, this book maps out a plan for greatly increasing the efficiency and economic opportunities of our current capitalistic system, all while taking environmental harm, waste and degradation out of the picture. The authors argue that the knowledge and technology are there to achieve a waste-free, non-polluting, money and job generating society. This book is meticulously researched and written to appeal to more business minded people than myself, which is a good thing, as most environ...more

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May 29, 2009 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment-nature-science

I am officially giving up on this book. I've had it checked out from the library for 6 weeks, and cannot bring myself to trudge through it anymore. Not that it's bad! But it does have a few strikes against it: a) It's heavy, which makes for a lousy commute; b) the print is tiny, which makes it seem insurmountable; c) I know next to nothing about economics or business, which means that much of that tiny print goes right over my head; and d) it was written 10 years ago, which means I have no idea...more

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Nov 13, 2007 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a great book about natural resources, economics, and efficiency. The tone is upbeat, and a great deal of the book is storytelling of examples where things are cleverly engineered to make them astoundingly more efficient than their typical counterparts. One example: buildings engineered to need no heating/cooling systems, using things like great insulation, 'smart' windows, and shade trees to manage the temperature without conventional electrical systems. Another example: lightweight cars...more This is a great book about natural resources, economics, and efficiency. The tone is upbeat, and a great deal of the book is storytelling of examples where things are cleverly engineered to make them astoundingly more efficient than their typical counterparts. One example: buildings engineered to need no heating/cooling systems, using things like great insulation, 'smart' windows, and shade trees to manage the temperature without conventional electrical systems. Another example: lightweight cars build mostly from carbon-fiber rather than steel that can get over 100 MPG. And lots of others, including carpet companies that recycle their carpets, better ways to make paper from wood, supply-chain improvements, etc.

The main thesis of the book, as suggested by the title, is that we need a market valuation of 'natural capital', which includes all those parts of the natural environment that provide value in the form of goods and services. Some parts of the environment (like that which gives the service of providing clean air and water, or biodiversity to mitigate risks) are more easily overlooked than others (like a forest, which has a more obvious valuation that can be assesed in terms of trees or sustainable tree-producing ability of the land). These resources are 'capital' in the economic sense, and whereas before now they have been so abundant that liquidating them for a profit was just easy money, now they are becoming depleted and such a strategy is too short-sighted. For a sustainable economic future, we need to find ways to make things we need without draining the rest of our natural capital. And so most of the book describes clever ways to do things more efficiently - consuming less, polluting less, and being an economic/marketable win with today's technology all at once. As a person concerned about the environment and someone that loves making things efficient, I loved the book, even if some of the examples were already slightly dated (1999).

A recurring side-theme that I also enjoyed is that over time it is easy for industries/practices to get caught in 'local maxima' that end up being inefficiencies/pessimizations when considered in terms of the big picture. Many of the examples in the book are so clever because they attack a problem in a new way, or challenge fundamental assumptions that are outdated but stick around due to inertia.(less)

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Jan 22, 2009 Ryan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

When I read Natural Capitalism I was quite enamored of it. However, since reading other material I have less enthusiasm for this book and the approach they generally describe (I've seen a documentary with the authors and read a number of news articles both by and about them). In order to work, many of their "solutions" require top down command and control economic framework which generally has a very poor record for using resources wisely.

Additionally, many of their predictions and/or time line...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Rob Walter added it

Shelves: didn-t-finish

I abandoned this book after a few chapters due to the fact that it didn't make much sense. Initially it promises to describe how, without any effort, the whole economy can - and in fact will - change to become sustainable. In fact, a sustainable economy is actually more efficient and more profitable than the one we have now, it promises.

Already there is a significant problem with this promise. If it's more profitable, and we can put our faith in the market, why isn't it already happening? This i...more

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Aug 09, 2010 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though many of the insights from the book have been published in a variety of venues, notably through work and publications of the Rocky Mountain Institute, it is a thought-provoking, engaging exercise in consideration of our material world that should be revisited with regularity. I think this should be a required text for any discussion of "externalities" in b-school econ classes.

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Feb 17, 2009 Amelia rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book describes a possible move from Industrial Capitalism to Natural Capitalism as a way to move to a more sustainable economic system. One of the many arguments against forcing industry into sustainable practices is that it will "cost too much" or stall the economy. This book gives an alternative, and quite convincing, view to that argument.

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Jun 18, 2007 Pierre rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: sustainable energy and environmental advocates

A generally uplifting book giving hope through economic principles in our capitalistic society to our most pressing environmental (climate change, solid waste, toxic waste) and energy (security, reliability, and cost) problems. Helps to break the opinion "barrier" that environmental quality must come at a price to a reduced quality of life and cost to our economy. Instead, the premise of the book offers bridges what is considered high quality environmental care from core ecological principles wi...more

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Aug 04, 2009 Mill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Slow read but if you're interested in where the future of business- local to international- MUST go then you should read this. The book is almost ten years old but the issues are still very much a hot topic.

Will probably read it again to focus on any parts pertaining to green building, manufacturing etc.

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Aug 25, 2010 Gregory Kouba rated it 5 of 5 stars

Anyone who wants to get a glimpse of what is possible in the green movement, now and in the near future, should read this book. Paul Hawken is one of today's most inspiring environmental writers and this is the blueprint for bringing our society into harmony with nature.

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Nov 25, 2012 Luis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, urban-studies, environmental-reading

A great book that forces you to re think common assumptions about industry and personal behavior. Yet it does it in a way that moves away from preachy to a practical guide in how to rethink our relationship to industry and environment. A must read for everyone!

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Nov 26, 2008 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: every adult.

I really want to give this book 5 stars because it is incredibly important. The vision it sets forth is revolutionary. I mean that in the personal sense, creating a change in the readers mind which effects their own consciousness as well as that of all. Critically important concept, to value people and the planet's natural resources for what they contribute to the web of life itself rather than just the abstract financial and physical capital they are currently valued as. I gave it four stars be...more

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