Natural Capitalism According To Hawken, Amory And Hunter Lovins

Natural capitalism according to Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins

The creation of the next industrial revolution is a 1999 book on environmental economy of which Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins are co -authors.

In natural capitalism, the authors of the book say that the global economy is dependent on natural resources and ecosystems services provided by nature. Natural capitalism is a criticism of industrial capitalism, saying that the traditional system of capitalism does not fully adjust towards its principles.

Natural capitalism makes known the critical interdependence between the production and the use of capital and the maintenance and supply of natural capital. Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins argue that, just by recognizing these essential relationships with the valuable resources of the land, the companies and the people they support can continue to exist.

What would an economy be like if all forms of capital completely value? What would happen if an economy was not organized around the abstractions of the neoclassical economy and accounting, but around the biological realities of nature? What would happen if the generally accepted accounting principles recognized natural and human capital not as a free service in inexhaustible?

The authors of Natural Capitalism say that these options are possible and that such an economy would offer a new and surprising set of opportunities for the whole society, which is equivalent to no less than the next industrial revolution.

According to Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, the next industrial revolution will be very dependent on the adoption of four central strategies, which would be the conservation of resources through more effective manufacturing processes, the reuse of materials that arefound in natural systems, a change in the values of quantity to quality, and invest in natural capital, or restore and maintain natural resources.

Paul Hawken described his motivation behind the title ’Natural Capitalism‘. He said he intended to be a word game about ’natural capital”. Hawken said that the underlying concept of natural capital and its implications for society, so he added a ‘-" at the end of that word as a double meaning.

Despite this intention of Hawken, many readers interpreted this word game in the opposite way. There was dissension of readers who misunderstood the title, believing that ‘capitalism’ was the operational word, and that the authors were therefore justifying or defending the concept of capitalism.

Hawken later commented on him for this confusion and said that although he supports the spirit of trade and business spirit, he does not support the ‘pathological’ qualities inherent to pure capitalism.