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    Natural Capitalism proposes a new industrial revolution that is sustainable and efficient. It advocates redesigning businesses and the economy to be more like biological systems by eliminating waste, becoming closed-loop systems, and providing services instead of products to reduce consumption and waste. The authors argue this approach would use resources 100 times more productively through new technologies while also saving money. However, widespread changes would require international cooperation through treaties and legislation to transform markets and incentivize natural capitalism since individual countries or businesses acting alone would have difficulty making the transition.

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    Natural Capitalism proposes a new industrial revolution that is sustainable and efficient. It advocates redesigning businesses and the economy to be more like biological systems by eliminating waste, becoming closed-loop systems, and providing services instead of products to reduce consumption and waste. The authors argue this approach would use resources 100 times more productively through new technologies while also saving money. However, widespread changes would require international cooperation through treaties and legislation to transform markets and incentivize natural capitalism since individual countries or businesses acting alone would have difficulty making the transition.

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    76 views2 pages

    Lovins and Lovins Natural Capitalism

    Uploaded by

    mschongkong
    Natural Capitalism proposes a new industrial revolution that is sustainable and efficient. It advocates redesigning businesses and the economy to be more like biological systems by eliminating waste, becoming closed-loop systems, and providing services instead of products to reduce consumption and waste. The authors argue this approach would use resources 100 times more productively through new technologies while also saving money. However, widespread changes would require international cooperation through treaties and legislation to transform markets and incentivize natural capitalism since individual countries or businesses acting alone would have difficulty making the transition.

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    of 2

    Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution

    By Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins (1999)

    Read exerts at:


    http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=47bSS5RhvgcC&dq=lovins+and+lovins+natural+capitalism&pr
    intsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=HxcRkKm4Ft&sig=BrztjPY2bB5h0NF84ArtjJjHgKE#PPA18,M1

    Problems
    • Amory Lovins – founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass Colorado USA.
    • Factor 4 and Factor 10 are now paradigms for sustainable development.
    • We have the technical capability to use the planets resources much more efficiently.
    • Maintaining and enhancing material well-being while reducing extraction, waste discharge and
    damage.
    • Business would operate like biological systems, recycling waste into raw materials and providing
    services rather than products.
    • Motivation would be economic rather than altruistic – efficiency measures also save money.
    • Current examples of business implementing eco-capitalism are exceptions rather than the rule.
    • In general business blithely ignores and vigorously denies its role in degrading the environment.
    • The consumerism dominates western culture is spreading around the world.
    • For most businesses absorbing the ecological and social cost of their operations would be expensive
    and perhaps suicidal unless all their competitors are forced to do likewise.
    • Lovins advocates a fundamental rethinking of the structure & reward system of commerce.
    • Where does this overhauling begin? How does it extend?
    • With multinational trade, any country would find it difficult to make changes on its own. Increased
    business costs will need to be equalised internationally to keep trade competitive.
    • Such changes will only be successful on global scale through international treaties and agreements.
    • Changes require substantial political intervention into the market & extraordinary political will at all
    levels.
    • Natural capitalism is unlikely to arise from the market itself. Legislation is required.

    Solutions
    • Green taxes – remove taxes from ‘goods’ (jobs & incomes) and put them on ‘bads’ (pollution &
    resource extraction).
    • Use resources with radically greater productivity; get 100 times as much work out of resources
    through better technology. Half a trillion tons a year of resources flow from depletion to pollution.
    Economics teaches us that you should economise on your scarcest resources.
    • Redesign production on biological lines with closed loops (no waste & no toxicity) design out anything
    that isn’t benign, valuable or has no re-saleable production. At the end of a products’ life materials
    are either natural nutrients (compost) or technical nutrients (remanufacturing).

    • Switch from selling goods to delivering a continuous flow of service and value. Consumers enter into
    agreements with producers e.g. computers are traded-in / up-graded as part of a package. Producers
    required to take them back.

    • Reinvest in restoring, sustaining and expanding the stock of natural capital (the natural world), as
    any prudent capitalist would do.

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