Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Author: Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
List Price: $17.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0316353000
Publisher: Back Bay Books (12 October, 2000)
Sales Rank: 3,074
Average Customer Rating: 4.42 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
A Real New World Order...
"It doesn't have to be this way..."For too long, our western industrial culture has equated sheer numbers, whether dollars, cans of soda or tons of trash, with growth. The concept of growth based only on labor productivity and dollars moved has lead us to our current degraded environmental and social conditions. The perverse accounting behind this scheme allows the government to actually subsidize wasteful practices and encourages industries to turn their backs on innovation and improvement.
The authors offer here an alternative that is at once eminently practical and thoroughly visionary. However, this work does not make the liberal's usual cry for increased command and control regulation by government. Rather, it argues for decreased regulation, the elimination of the above-mentioned subsidies and an honest accounting of the true costs of production that include the value of degraded natural and social systems. Such new practices, which are oriented toward a truly free market, would force producers to increase resource, rather than labor, efficiency, which would, in turn, result in increased employment, greater innovation and healthier ecosystems.
Should the reader be overly skeptical, the authors share many examples of companies who are "doing well by doing good," that is, being commercially successful while at the same time improving the quality of life for all natural systems, both human and non-human.
This, along with Hawken's earlier The Ecology of Commerce, as well as Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth by Lester R. Brown are highly recommended as primers on a new vision for the future.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Beyond Darwin
As this new century begins, if there is only one book which everyone on the planet should read, it would be Natural Capitalism. Why is it so important? In my opinion, because it provides the most convincing, the most compelling argument in support of Wendell Berry's assertion that "what is good for the world will be good for us." Darwin's concept of natural selection becomes irrelevant if there is no environment in which such selection can occur. The authors introduce us to "The Next Industrial Revolution" with all oif its emerging possibilities. In subsequent chapters, they continue to examine natural capitalism in terms of "four central strategies": radical resource productivity, biomimicry, service and flow economy, and investment in it. According to the authors, 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 practrical." For me, the information provided in Chapter 3 was almost incomprehensible in terms of the nature and extent of waste. Of the $9 trillion spent every year in the United States, at least $2 trillion is wasted annually. How? For example: Highway accidents ($150 billion), highway congestion ($100 billion in lost productivity), total hidden costs of driving (nearly $1 trillion), nonessential/fraudulent healthcare ($65 billion), inflated and unnecessary medical overhead ($250 billion), and crime ($450 billion). All of this waste can and should be reduced, if not eliminated. What the authors present, in effect, is a blueprint for the survival of the planet. All manner of statistical evidence supports their specific recommendations. Unless "The Next Industrial Revolution" succeeds in implementing those recommendations, natural capitalism will eventually be depleted ...and no one left to regret its loss.
Rating: 4 out of 5
US needs to realize one thing
Natural Capitalism was about how buisneses and individuals can live more sustainably. The book was writeen around four central stratagies; radical resource productivity, biomomicry, serice and flow economy, and investing in natural capital. The second chapter gave an example of a radical resource productivity by using hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel cells reverse electrolysis combining Hydrogen abd Oxegyn thus saving the oil supple. One of the strong emphasis of this book was biomicry, which is when industrial processes mimic those found in nature. Photovoltaic cells are an example that was brought up in this book Service and flow economy was mentioned as being the shift from providing goods for sale to leasing services taht manufacturers would be responsiblw throughout its liftime. Investing in natural capital would be used to rebuild the resources weve degraded.
One of the best aspects of this book was that it gave practical suggestions for how people can help renew and conserve the envrironment. It not onle pointe out the environental benifits, but also the financial and practical benifits such as lower electricity costs, cleaner air, higher productivity rates, and more money being used for education instead of companies who pollute the air and earth. A disavadtage of this book is that it was a bit redundent. It emphasized the same points over and over again in similar ways. Similar Products
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth
The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology and the Evolutionary Corporation (Conscientious Commerce)
Book Index