I join former President Clinton in calling Natural Capitalism "One of the 10 most important books in the world". In 100 years students could very well study 3 seminal texts in economic thought: The Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, and Natural Capitalism. Rather than emphasizing environmental problems, Natural Capitalism is a book of solutions. Do everyone a favor: read this book.

I just skimmed this book to find the essence of its argument and pick out excerpts for my Jensen tutorial. The main thesis is that natural capitalism can do things better for people and the planet in the long term. The premises of natural capitalism are of course intuitive and appealing. However, the book ends up being a bundle of great individual ideas masquerading as a plan for saving the whole economy/society. The ideas on offer could and would be picked up by individual entrepeneurs and make them a bundle of money while saving the planet and helping people. Hawken and the Lovins seem to believe that that's all they can or need to do (which is fine, if that's what they want to accomplish).

Yet their unbridled optimism pushes them to go further and assert that business owners who don't adopt natural capitalist principles will be left behind by the new wave; that the economy will simply shift on its own in the same way that it shifted from coal to oil or into industrial capitalism. I looked through the whole book and came to the conclusion that this is simply an article of faith: they never discuss its likelihood or any evidence about the question. Since natural capitalism is predicated on system-level design and shifts in high-level political policy, this is a startling omission. Individual business owners might make some money using resources more efficiently, but natural capitalism won't come about unless systemic change occurs, and this book offers nothing but faith and optimism about that. They don't even exhort readers to lobby for those system level changes – they seem to think that would be a waste of time, since it's inevitable anyway.

That said, the evidence they marshal is rich and great, and they really do have some great specific concepts and ideas in here. It's just framed in a really idiosyncratic way that makes it seem like more than it can really be.

It was also interesting to me that Hawken just treats the course of history as this series of brilliant innovations that solve engineering and distribution problems, coupled with all these bumbling errors and clumsinesses that cause all these mishaps and make the whole thing fail to achieve its real potential and true goal (which he asserts is to make everyone happier or whatever). What's interesting is that he doesn't ignore social inequality and racism and these issues - he clearly cares about them deeply. But he doesn't ever engage in a class analysis or something that would show that these problems are caused by some to benefit themselves at expense of others. This precludes him from addressing the fact that those who benefit might try to influence the growth of natural capitalism away from the social and environmental values he sees it creating towards a more or less sustainable version of today's social order.

Overwhelming. Breakthrough book. Loved it for the optimistic and concrete ideas and attitude. Have referenced the Rocky Mountain Institute regularly through the years since, RMI.org . Just now seeing they are aiming for 100% sustainable power for the country, and moving toward it! When I doubt that we might not be able to turn the climate disruption around in time, they are one place to find hope.

This book should be required reading for all econ and business majors. However, humanity is already way past the point of turning back the tide of environmental destruction. The damage is still being done, and the only thing we can hope to do now is lessen the impact of this damage.
Currently, the majority of environmental destruction is being done in the third world (thanks mainly to the greed of first world countries, or, rather, our insatiable need to maintain our current standard of living). What needs to be done then, is to spread ideas touted in this book to those countries.

Neoclassical economics will be the end of our society, this is where the changes need to come from

An optimistic look at capitalism-driven ways to get us our of the environmental mess we're in now. Interesting ideas. Hope some of them are accurate.

Solid book and could be a textbook or at least part of a syllabus.

This is the most optimistic book I have read on the capacity of humankind to redirect the train of civilization onto a track that might not lead us over the cliff we're heading towards. I recommend it to anyone who has sunken into the despair of cynicism (we're doomed!) and to anyone who, conversely, thinks that acting to "save the environment" hurts business. It has a lot of data to shlep through, but I found it worth it. Please read!!!

I hope that our current political decision makers have read this. The modern experiments with climatic modelling and economic response have the potential for massive and if incorrect, costly consequences. Whether we are planning to do enough or not will only be decided by future outcomes, but in the present time I think there are many principles presented in Natural Capitalism that are easy wins and beneficial regardless of the long term climate prognostics.

I abandoned this book after a few chapters due to the fact that it didn't make much sense. Initially it promises to describe how, without any effort, the whole economy can - and in fact will - change to become sustainable. In fact, a sustainable economy is actually more efficient and more profitable than the one we have now, it promises.

Already there is a significant problem with this promise. If it's more profitable, and we can put our faith in the market, why isn't it already happening? This is especially pertinent given that this book was written over ten years ago and none of the predictions I read have come to pass.

The book says that it will explain how the market will provide all of these solutions but the two chapters that follow don't explain it at all. Instead they abandon economics altogether in favour of propagating half-truths about engineering and science that seem to contradict the thesis of the book.

At that point I gave up.

Originally published in '99, I read this book 4 years ago, but had to reread it because of its unparalleled ability to provoke thought. This isn't just a book on economics or a book about saving the environment, this book represents the next evolution in economic thought. It posits that environmentalists and capitalists are not at odds in any way, in fact, they want the exact same things, namely to save resources and build a resilient (eco)system. I truly cannot say enough good things about this book; if you love money or the planet earth, then you owe it to future generations to read this book.

Watch as I become a true hippie-capitalist.