Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution.

• Author: Ohlemacher, Richard L.
• Position: Review

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins (New York: Little, Brown and Company; 1999) 378 pp.

Over the past 20 years, as the environmental movement has moved toward mainstream status, few people have consistently integrated the relationship between the environment, economics, human health, energy and business. Among those few have been Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. Recently these important environmentalist thinkers have teamed up to write Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, an ambitious attempt to develop a broad vision of an efficient and eco-friendly society.

The framework of this book is based on the idea that the modern economy as it has been constructed since the Industrial Revolution is no longer appropriate to the world in which we live today While the Industrial Revolution increased the efficiency and productivity of a relatively small population by exploiting abundant natural resources, today we have a large population dependent on relatively scarce natural capital. And yet society's approach to production remains the same. Over time this has created a bias toward resource liquidation--a path the authors argue is not required for economic prosperity Rather, this path is a by-product of wasteful habits that limit business performance and profits while universally diminishing the quality of life.

The authors articulate the notion of "natural capitalism": what capitalism would be if its largest category of capital--the natural capital of the ecosystem--were properly valued. Incorporating this concept into economic activity; they argue, would require an approach to business that emphasizes four factors:

1. Resource productivity aims to decrease the destructive and wasteful flow of natural resources. Changes in both production design and technology will allow companies to increase the efficiency with which they utilize resources, helping to avoid depletion and pollution. Such efforts, the authors argue, will save time and money

2. Ecological redesign means redesigning industrial systems to change how industrial materials are used so that no waste or toxic by-products are created. The very concept of "waste" must be changed from something that must be discarded to something that needs to be merely returned--either to the environment or back to the factory for alternative manufacturing uses.

3. Service and flow economy involves a fundamental...