Natural Capitalism

A summary of:
Paul Hawken (2004). Natural Capitalism: Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? In Ausubel, K. & Harpignies, J.P., eds., Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies. Sierra Club Books: San Francisco.
&
Amory and Hunter Lovins (2004). Natural Capitalism: Where the Rubber Meets the Road In Ausubel, K. & Harpignies, J.P., eds., Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies. Sierra Club Books: San Francisco.

I read Hawken’s (with the Lovins’) book, Natural Capitalism. It was quite long, and a little bit tedious. The gist of it, what redeemed it, can be found in these much shorter chapters, summarized here.

First, a definition, from the Lovins’ chapter: “Natural capitalism doesn’t just mean reducing waste; it means eliminating the whole concept of waste through better design, design that adopts biological patters, processes, and often materials. This approach implies eliminating any industrial output that represents a disposal cost rather than a salable product” (169). The Lovins’ argue: “We believe the leaders in waste reduction are going to be in the private sector, but there remains a vital role for governments and civil society. It’s important to remember the purposes and limitations of markets. Markets make a great servant but a bad master and a worse religion. Markets produce value, but only communities and families produce values. And a society that tries to substitute markets for politics, ethics, or faith is seriously adrift” (174). (To me, this suggests that the whole free market ethos that underpins the Internet – e.g. Net Neutrality – needs to be reconsidered.)

Hawken’s definition is this: “Natural capitalism as a metaphor is an attempt to describe an integrated application and program of the economies of restoration. Rather than being an (149) approach to sustainability, natural capitalism attempts to describe a practical relationship between human beings and the biosphere that will improve the quality of life for all while dramatically reducing our impact on living systems and eventually increasing ecosystem viability and productivity” (150). Hawkens draws on the wisdom of C.S. Lewis, who wrote in The Abolition of Man, “What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” Hawkens responds: “It is the power of corporations over people and place. The world’s top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 percent of the world’s people. This power was never granted” (149).

Another key element of natural capitalism is that, “in the developed world, the limiting factor to human well-being and development is no longer human-made capital; it is life itself. As more people place greater strain on living systems, (152) limits to prosperity are coming to be determined by scarcities of natural systems rather than industrial prowess. …Unlike traditional economic factors of production, these biological limiting factors are not fungible; in other words, they can’t be replaced” (153). And what of our human capital? “We have the highest rates of abortion, drug use, violence, gangs, and teen pregnancies of any industrial nation. The list goes on. So what does that tell us? What young people are saying to us is that they don’t want to be here. At all. On earth. In the United States, besides injury, the greatest cause of mortality among teenagers between ten and fourteen years old is suicide. Not drugs, not violence, not AIDS. Suicide” (156). Surely this is a threat to the natural capital of humans – and our mental health is a necessary consideration of any responsible action. And anyway, even if we argue that humans are better off with certain technological advances, is this really worth it in the grand scheme of things? Hawken asks the most perfect question: “Consider the idea of road warriors rushing onto the red-eye with their Palm Pilots, their laptops, their cell phones – what’s that all about? So we ask the question, Do we really want to be more productive? Do we really want to swap more productivity for the loss of our forests, our riparian systems, our resources? I don’t think so” (152)….“So the real question is, What are we doing? We’re creating a world in which we cannot spend enough time with our children. To accomplish that, we are sacking the planet” (152).

Another element is: “if we’re going to create an economic system that has any semblance or resemblance to biological systems, we can no longer think of ourselves as episodic manufacturers of goods but must recast ourselves as deliverers of a flow of services. After all, that flow of services is what we receive from nature. The materials, molecules, and compounds themselves must be carefully marshaled and monitored. Either they must be made from living systems and be capable of being biodegraded or reconstituted, or they must be technical nutrients that are returned to industrial systems in a closed loop. There are no exceptions. There is no landfill in this society” (155).

And Hawken also argues that we must restore natural capital, (although he doesn’t phrase it like this) as an indicator of progress: “We cannot simply organize ourselves to be effective, efficient, or productive. We have to organize our industrial systems in such a way that our oceans, our soil, our waters, our riparian systems, and our climates are restored, step by step by step. Restoration has to be a natural outcome of what we do, not an altruistic of a legislated outcome” (155).

This is Hawken’s grand, inspiring vision:
“What is possible in fifty years is a world that is wonderfully messy, shockingly magical, and deliriously creative. It doesn’t fit a single scenario written anywhere by anyone. It is not a world defined by technologies, tools, and products. It is not a world that can be measured by money. It is not a world that can be reduced to demographics. It will be a world defined by the acts of restor-(159)ing life on earth, a world that celebrates dance, costume, song, ritual, magic, prayer, worship, and play. It will be a world that cares for its old people, its children, and its storytellers. This is the work of carefully reconstituting what has been lost by creating conditions conducive to life on earth. It is born of a culture in which no materials used in industry cause damage to anyone, now or later. It is created by a society that imitates and emulates the design brilliance of nature that we reside within and walk upon and have never fully appreciated. Ours is a time of extraordinary work, because it is not the work of a decade or a century, but the work of a millennium” (160).