Book Review: Natural Capitalism
By Sandor SchoichetNatural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
If there was one key to turning around the damaging business and environmental practices of modern culture, what would it be? 'Natural Capitalism,' the seminal 1999 call for a broader focus on sustainability, presents an overwhelming case that the key is resource efficiency and effectiveness. Just as conventional capitalism is all about using financial capital effectively, so 'natural capitalism' is about expanding that bottom line focus to include the natural resources and ecosystem services underlying the ability of business and society to function in the first place. The authors argue that with appropriate shifts in business perspective and government policy, our economy could be something like 90% more efficient in its use of irreplaceable natural resources, thereby mitigating ecosystem impacts, enabling global development, and staving off climate change.
Throughout history, until very recently, man has been a small actor in an overwhelmingly large world. Most of the book explores how this has given rise to our ingrained cultural patterns of wasteful resource utilization, limited focus on capital efficiency, and drive for production volumes, while assuming unbounded access to subsidized natural resources and 'free' ecosystem services. Shifting perspective to include natural capital on the business balance sheet, and to expand lean manufacturing principles beyond the factory walls is what's required to address the ecology/climate change nexus. This change in perspective is embodied in a range of sustainable business concepts, including the 'triple bottom line' (profits, people, and planet), and the 'cradle-to-cradle' model for recycling products and integrating industries to eliminate 'waste'.
The basic principles of natural capitalism put forward can be summarized as: (1) focus on natural resource efficiency (2) using closed loop, biomemetic, nontoxic processes (3) to deliver more appropriate end-user services (4) while investing in restoring, sustaining, and expanding natural capital. Following these principles leads not to constraints on business or lowered expectations, but an enormous range of new business opportunities to profit from improved efficiencies and environmentally beneficial activities. One of the best expressions of this perspective comes in the discussion on climate change, providing a refreshing contrast to the recent spate of bad news on this front: "Together, the [available business] opportunities can turn climate change into an unnecessary artifact of [our] uneconomically wasteful use of resources."
While the authors deliver an awesome, deeply researched articulation of their vision, showing with many examples why it's important and how it can work within our current capitalistic economies, the book has two key flaws. First, it falls prey to the syndrome first articulated by Paul Saffo, founder of the Institute for the Future, of confusing a clear vision of the future with a short path. This combines with an excessive reliance on sheer volume of examples to make their points, too many of them poorly explained, bristling with non-comparable numbers, and substituting hand-waving for real outcomes. Deeper exploration of fewer examples might have illustrated the principles better, and have been much easier to read. Also, 11 years after the original publication, many of the examples are seen to be hastily chosen and and used to support glib and overreaching conclusions that make the authors seem naive. Examples include the advent hydrogen powered cars ("hypercars"), the potential for shutting down Ruhr Valley coal production in favor of direct social payments to coal workers, or the imminent triumph of the Kyoto Protocols for international carbon trading. And, while much attention is paid to articulating the perverse incentives, misguided taxes and subsidies, and split responsibilities that impede more efficient system approaches, there's short shrift given to new technology adoption rates, the scale of existing infrastructure investments, or the political complexities of changing incentives and subsidies.
However, if you are interested in understanding the genesis and foundations of the modern sustainability movement, this is a fundamental text. Despite its flaws, after 11 years the fundamental argument and principles hold up well and are still inspiring.
Book Review: Power Hungry
By Sandor Schoichetby Robert Bryce
Book Review: Whole Earth Discipline
By Sandor Schoichet
Brand, as ever, is a clear and forceful writer, fearlessly putting himself on the line with specific recommendations and a call to action. This is the Plan missing from Al Gore's otherwise excellent textbook, 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve to Climate Crisis' --harder-edged, more urgent, more tech-savvy, willing to name names, kick butt, and provoke a reaction. This is the place to start if you're ready to move beyond the conventional green perspective and really get a grip on what responding to the climate challenge entails. Frightening and exhilarating at the same time!
Book Review: Eaarth
By Sandor Schoichet
I'm conflicted about this book, and McKibben's style in general. First, this is a valuable contribution to the debate about how to think about climate change and appropriate goals for our planetary future. McKibben actually presents many good ideas (in the second half of the book), rooted in a realistic and compelling vision of how our world is changing and how we need to adapt. However, his writing style, especially when presenting bad news (the first half of the book) is just "one damn thing after another," an endless listing of specifics without adequate context or meaningful analysis ... he apparently does not understand that anecdotes are not evidence. While he makes his argument most energetically, and has lots of suggestive detail that appears to support it, in the cases with which I am directly familiar he is guilty of taking things out of context, then making gross simplifications and overreaching generalizations. And this is too bad, because, overall, I think he's basically right, and that his suggestions for change are excellent. Probably the most important aspect of this book is simply his tough, clear-eyed situation assessment of the damage that's already been done, the building momentum of environmental change, and the need to get on with a meaningful response. I worry, though, that by beating us over the head with a stream of bad news, and then framing his suggestions for a response in terms of achieving a "graceful decline", too many people will be turned off and won't hear the good ideas towards the end of the book. The grand project of changing our culture so that we can live in a durable and robust symbiosis with our environment on a global scale ... that's not a graceful decline, but a call to help create a new age as exciting as any that went before.
Book Review: Turning Oil into Salt
By Sandor Schoichet
This slim volume is the clearest and most direct analysis I've yet seen of oil's position as a strategic commodity, and the potential for open fuel standards to enable a market-based pathway to transportation fuel choice. Especially notable for its independent perspective ... we hear so much about the need for 'drop in' petroleum equivalents and the 'ethanol blend wall', but not nearly enough about other approaches that might emulate the open interface model that has driven the phenomenal growth of the internet. Absolutely required reading for anyone interested in clean energy, the potential contribution of biofuels to achieving energy security, and the practical steps that we need to take to move down the path.
Book Review: Science as a Contact Sport
By Sandor Schoichet
If you care about the big picture of climate change that's driving the urgency behind global environmental agreements and the commercialization of greentech, then Schneider's 'Science as a Contact Sport' is must reading. The book achieves two objectives in an engaging and forceful manner. First it is a great introduction to the science of climate change, presented through Schneider's personal experience as a key participant in its development. And second, it provides much-needed insight into how the issue has played out in the US legislature and the global media, again from an up-close and personal point of view. Democracy and government are both messy systems, but still are forums where the environmental and greentech communities must ultimately triumph, and Schneider's personal experience should be of value to everyone engaged in the battle. Some elements of Schneider's message echo Al Gore's discussion in 'The Assault on Reason,' but are presented in a clearer, more direct, and better operationalized manner. Highly recommended!
Book Review: Why We Hate the Oil Companies
By Sandor Schoichet
