While dated, Hawken introduces a concept that has yet to capture the attention of economists: the materialist perspective of Adam Smith and Karl Marx took ecosystem services for granted and should be amended.

I'm through the first chapter- and all I can say so far is that I love optimism.

Empowering read for environmentalists

Now that I've finished this book, I'm probably going to have to start it all over again to pick out all the things that I can actually absorb and apply. Lots and lots of suggestions and hypotheticals in here, and since it was written so long ago I'm not sure what is applicable today, what has already been done, and what still CAN be done. Oy.

A generally uplifting book giving hope through economic principles in our capitalistic society to our most pressing environmental (climate change, solid waste, toxic waste) and energy (security, reliability, and cost) problems. Helps to break the opinion "barrier" that environmental quality must come at a price to a reduced quality of life and cost to our economy. Instead, the premise of the book offers bridges what is considered high quality environmental care from core ecological principles with the principles of efficiency and profit that keep today's market system humming.

Has a slight tendency to be a little too "economic" and loses some relavancy given the political/cultural/social realities that also encompass the systems that drive our positive and negative impacts on our environment.

slow read. advice: pick a chapter, read it, put book on shelf for a month, repeat.

good content makes it worth reading in pieces or skimming the most interesting parts.

How they could write so much about valuing natural resources and the services they provide is beyond me, but they did. This book was a slog for me and presented few ideas that were new at the time. Maybe if you were new to green business thinking it would be revolutionary.

Perhaps the book that had a bigger impact on my than any other. It's a blend of optimism and pragmatism that's hard to match. It's not the kind of book you'll tear through with reckless abandon because the writing is so beautiful, but it's a very honest take on how we built the world we live in and how we'll have to rebuild it if we plan on surviving the next century.

This book is decidedly dated in many ways. Written in 1998, Hawken tries his best to present viable options for a Utopian natural capitalist model. With all the doom and gloom surrounding corporate unwillingness to become environmentally sustainable, this book is definitely uplifting. Unfortunately, it's lacking statistics and other numbers that would make it seem like more than an environmentalist's pipe dream. Additionally, some of the ideas, such as the hydrogen fuel cell revolution, have since been pretty well debunked. I'm anxious to see how the rest of the book goes. There are a lot of really solid, attainable goals despite the almost naive optimism.

Really this book should get 6 stars. It is the most thorough explanation of progressive economics that I have ever read. It is extremely detailed and very convincing. It has helped me think more clearly about such diverse topics as management style, taxes, solving problems in context (as opposed to isolation), and the future. Everyone should read this even though its a little thick. It's also very gracefully argued.

I think this book should be a must read for every single person in America. Whether you believe that Global Warming is happening or not, it gives food for thought on how simple changes can have a big impact on how we consume.

i read paul hawken's book "the ecology of commerce" while i was on vacation in thailand during a break in japan. i am such a nerd about this topic that i was underlining and taking notes, that's right, while on vacation in thailand! of course i was going to read his follow up book, "natural capitalism," duh! this book is quite dense and each chapter covers a different sector of the economy and natural resource area and talks thoroughly about what needs to happen, what's happening, and what the results will be. this isn't just about environmental awareness and saving, but he shows that it is commercially practical, and financially smart, to add natural resource conservation into the design and implementation processes.

quote taken from the dust jacket: traditional capitalism, they argued, has always neglected to assign monetary value to its largest stock of capital--namely, the natural resources and ecosystem services that make possible all economic activity, and all life. natural capitalism, in contrast, takes a proper account of these costs. as the first step toward a solution to environmental loss, it advocates resourse productivity--doing more with less. (there's more i want to include, but i'll stop there)