This book is a bible. A solutions manual to all the knotty questions that oil addicts, like you and me, have had about how to change society into a creature of sustainability. This book will show you that the only obstacles to a sustainable future are political and societal. Read it and weep with joy.

Still painfully prescient and relevant over 20 years after publication.

This book describes a possible move from Industrial Capitalism to Natural Capitalism as a way to move to a more sustainable economic system. One of the many arguments against forcing industry into sustainable practices is that it will "cost too much" or stall the economy. This book gives an alternative, and quite convincing, view to that argument.

Well written and researched, insightful, and easy to read.... But oh so very wrong.

I simply can't agree with the core proposition of the book - that private enterprise is the future of environmentalism. In our society and economy, I do believe that our companies absolutely have a moral obligation to be stewards of our future just as we all do, but the reality is that few corporations would agree unless 1. driven by responsible leadership / bylaws (ie. Patagonia, B corps), 2. focused on a customer base that cares (ie. Costco), or 3. required by regulation. The primary legal obligation of publicly traded companies in the US is to 'maximize shareholder value,' and 'value' is almost invariably interpreted as meaning 'profit' or 'growth.' Especially as companies become more and more short-sighted and focused on immediate returns, companies that take such a long view are fewer and further between.

This book lays out an idealistic, though impressive, plan that depends on motivations that simply don't exist in reality, and there are far, far too many examples to the contrary for their plan to be considered feasible. Still, there is value in this book and many of the examples and ideas given are excellent studies, and anyone looking to run a company responsibly should read this book.

The core precept, however, is demonstrably flawed. An overwhelming number of counter-examples exist.

This book was recommended to me by someone who I thought was intending to poke at my anti-capitalist personality, and so I stubbornly resisted picking it up. I also initially misunderstood the title, thinking it meant that the book was a treatise on how capitalism is "natural" and therefore good.

When I finally gave in and read it, I was impressed. It's basically an appeal to capitalists to consider ways in which ecologically responsible business practices can result in bigger profits, which a good start, and better than nothing.

This is a great book about natural resources, economics, and efficiency. The tone is upbeat, and a great deal of the book is storytelling of examples where things are cleverly engineered to make them astoundingly more efficient than their typical counterparts. One example: buildings engineered to need no heating/cooling systems, using things like great insulation, 'smart' windows, and shade trees to manage the temperature without conventional electrical systems. Another example: lightweight cars build mostly from carbon-fiber rather than steel that can get over 100 MPG. And lots of others, including carpet companies that recycle their carpets, better ways to make paper from wood, supply-chain improvements, etc.

The main thesis of the book, as suggested by the title, is that we need a market valuation of 'natural capital', which includes all those parts of the natural environment that provide value in the form of goods and services. Some parts of the environment (like that which gives the service of providing clean air and water, or biodiversity to mitigate risks) are more easily overlooked than others (like a forest, which has a more obvious valuation that can be assesed in terms of trees or sustainable tree-producing ability of the land). These resources are 'capital' in the economic sense, and whereas before now they have been so abundant that liquidating them for a profit was just easy money, now they are becoming depleted and such a strategy is too short-sighted. For a sustainable economic future, we need to find ways to make things we need without draining the rest of our natural capital. And so most of the book describes clever ways to do things more efficiently - consuming less, polluting less, and being an economic/marketable win with today's technology all at once. As a person concerned about the environment and someone that loves making things efficient, I loved the book, even if some of the examples were already slightly dated (1999).

A recurring side-theme that I also enjoyed is that over time it is easy for industries/practices to get caught in 'local maxima' that end up being inefficiencies/pessimizations when considered in terms of the big picture. Many of the examples in the book are so clever because they attack a problem in a new way, or challenge fundamental assumptions that are outdated but stick around due to inertia.

A great book that forces you to re think common assumptions about industry and personal behavior. Yet it does it in a way that moves away from preachy to a practical guide in how to rethink our relationship to industry and environment. A must read for everyone!

But is it capitalism?  About the highest praise I can give this book is that it is not complete rubbish.  There are aspects of this book, particularly the way that it encourages a wise environmental stewardship and the skillful use of technology as well as intelligent design to make processes as well as buildings less wasteful.  Unfortunately, with that sound advice comes a great deal of writing which is unsound, which repeats tired cliches about the Club of Rome's limits to growth, with strong bashing of American desires for dispersed settlement and easy personal transportation, with a great deal too much trust in the coercive power of government to enforce dubious actions that would not receive support democratically, and perhaps even the strong hint of Agenda 21 and other unappealing aspects of what is mistakenly viewed as international law.  Moreover, the authors praise technologies that have simply not developed or achieved any sort of mainstream use and thus are unable to help create the green paradise the authors desire, although it should be noted that the authors themselves see their political worldview as a combination of blue capitalism, red socialism, and green environmentalism.  It may be such a combination, but it is not freedom loving capitalism.

This book of more than 300 pages is divided into fifteen planets.  After a preface and acknowledgements the authors hype a supposed next industrial revolution to make the world a more sustainable place (1).  This leads to a discussion of hypercars and neighborhoods to rid dependence on driving (2).  The authors tackle the subject of waste (3) and how the world can be made a better place (4) through the skillful use of various building blocks that utilize high technology and design principles (5).  The authors discuss how some advances can tunnel through the cost barrier that limits savings (6), the way that a great deal of waste (muda) informs a lot of industrial processes (7), and gives a great deal of talking about capital gains (8) as it relates to natural as well as financial capital.  The authors write about efficient use of wood fibers (9) and the importance of having sufficient food (10), and also look at solutions to improve water efficiency (11) as well as how to make money off of climate change concerns (12) even if one does not believe in them.  Finally the author looks at ways to make markets work better (for whom?) (13) as well as ideals about human capitalism (14) and speculation about the future of our planet (15).  The book ends with notes, references, and an index.

This book is not as good as it thinks it is and can be added to a long list of false prophecies that sought to imagine a better world through higher levels of regulation and government coercion in favor of environmentalist goals.  The authors show a marked anti-American bias and also evince a desire for America to copy the corrupt and technocratic bureaucracy that one finds in Europe, for example.  The authors shower a great deal of praise on technocratic figures like the former mayor of a Brazilian city who showed some ingenuity in how to handle the social crises of the 1980's and 1990's there and who then moved on to govern his hometown province.  Some of what the authors talk about would be interesting to see, like less wasteful homes and office buildings and factories and even toilets that separate urine and feces in such a way as to increase efficiency, but the authors' naive belief that the stock of technologies would quickly change in mainstream American society was definitely unfulfilled.  There are aspects of this book where the authors' worldview is deeply abhorrent, and others that are merely evidence of a certain lack of realism in the understanding of sunk costs and in the barriers to innovation that prevent a great many solutions from being successfully implemented.  Such are the ways of the world, though.

Paints a pretty compelling picture of a possible future where capitalism and ecological stewardship are not only compatible but function symbiotically - the picture is compelling not just because it's nice to image there being a non-eschatological future, but because they use existing, real-world examples of systems and processes that need only be extended in order for that future to come about.

The book is pretty personally important to me, enough that I can imagine bringing at least a part of the vision into reality as something I work at for the rest of my life.

I expected a lot from this book and, as is normal with expectations, they were not met. Not that the book isn't good but maybe I should have read it 10 years ago when I first picked it up. Time has a way of making some ideas seem dated, even if these ideas are still important. Tunneling through prices and looking at design as a whole rather than an accumulation of individual steps is important to keep in mind. Optimizing pieces of a puzzle on their own doesn't mean the whole is efficient. All good to keep in mind but how much do i have to know to do a project myself? Maybe that's just my shortcoming. It would seem like an industry would have come up to help people look at the entirety of a project - home remodeling, in particular since that seems like an area where people would need the most help - but that doesn't seem to be the case. Or maybe it is but they companies are few and far between. The book makes good points but I just found it less than gripping.

Written in 1999, this book maps out a plan for greatly increasing the efficiency and economic opportunities of our current capitalistic system, all while taking environmental harm, waste and degradation out of the picture. The authors argue that the knowledge and technology are there to achieve a waste-free, non-polluting, money and job generating society. This book is meticulously researched and written to appeal to more business minded people than myself, which is a good thing, as most environmental activism is usually preaching to the choir and lacking in economic ideology. All sectors of the economy, from transportation to industry to water to energy to construction to agriculture to government are discussed. Each sector is examined for inefficiencies and waste also ground-breaking revolutions are brought to light. Most are simple and just involve a different way of thinking.
Although this is definitely not a light, fun read, I would still recommend it to those interested in efficiency, “green” issues or economics/business practices. It reads almost like a textbook, only more interesting and a bit more light-hearted at times.
It is interesting to me to read it now with $4 gas prices, knowing that when it was written (’99), gas was about ¼ that and the technologies and changes mentioned were even profitable back then. It really makes me wonder what has happened that we have not moved forward as much as this book suggests we can (or could have).
Look into it.

“If a company knew that nothing that came into its factory could be thrown away, and that everything it produced would eventually return, how would it design its components and products? The question is more than a theoretical construct, because the Earth works under precisely these strictures.”

In some respects it is a little sad that many of the predictions made back when this book was printed still haven't "happened". None-the-less the broad principles it discusses still apply today. The section on Caritiba is also very inspiring ...