I liked the piece on Napa California west of us which has for decades suffered when the massive winter rains come thru and I wanted to read of there move toward restricting building on what is known as a flood plain, without hurting the economy.
Likewise in Chapter six, page 125 King County Washington and how people from distinctly different business backgrounds, blue colour to white collar corporate (Weyerhaeuser) worked together to protect the Snoqualmie Falls area, which having been there in person, is a majestic place that would have been ruined had big business been allowed to build there.
But it is the way the authors have made such an effort to think outside the American box, and have shown success stories from all over the world, where businesses have or are becoming enlightened and are discovering that being environmentally sound means money and success.
But as they note on page 232 "There is no single answer to the worlds environmental dilemmas, and the progress to date toward capturing the economic value of environmental services has been so limited as to be almost symbolic. Still, what has happened so far illustrates an approach with great scope for improving the world."
The idea is not simply that capitalism can save the world, but that well-directed, well-informed market forces will finally come to understand that beneath the bottom line of capitalism as currently practiced, there's a much more critical bottom line -- a primordial capitalism -- the living sytems of the planet. The economy of nature provides real wealth and natural wisdom without dysfunctional spinoffs like pollution, cancer, habitat destruction... If we take care of that living economy, it will take care of us.
This is an important book, because it gives us real-world examples of how nature underlies the market economy. We need this book to be used in college and high school classrooms, discussion groups,corporate retreats, and solitary late-night soul searches. Its message is critical to the continued prosperity of life as we know it.