I read through this with a book club at work. It spurred on really fruitful, interesting conversation, but man, is it dense!
I will more consider it a reference book on my shelf because the authors touch on so many points related to our overall economy and environment.

When you have lived with something your whole life, often you take it for granted that it is true. Perhaps this is how most people see money and economics. But let these economists explain to you just how flawed and inadequate our concept of wealth is, and also let them show you some alternatives. Why are humans so destructive, why do we damage the natural ecosystems of the Earth, and why do we spew so much pollution into the environment? It's because we have defined wealth in a way that is inconsistent with reality. We need natural ecosystems, but we never pay them for anything we take. We breathe the oxygen but we don't pay the trees for it. We drink the water but we don't pay the rivers for it. As long as we don't put a price tag on nature, we will not be able to quantify how much our destructive actions are costing us. If we need the forests and the oceans just as we need our houses and factories, then we should consider nature also as capital, as things that have explicit monetary value.

Capitalism as many know is an economic system based on private ownership of capital and the means of production, where the creation of goods and services are designed to make a profit. What most people don't know is that this system as its been implemented (and under-regulated) is completely unsustainable as it promotes the production of consumable products (rather than re-usable or longer lasting products), a high level of waste production, and environmental depletion in general. When we "borrow" environmental capital and never pay it back (e.g. mining, fossil fuels, fresh water, etc.), this environmental price is not appropriately reflected in the price of a product. This is perhaps the biggest failure of capitalism as we use it today. What this book addresses is how we can integrate the idea of capitalism and sustainability through several methods including but not limited to: environmental foot-print taxation (including carbon taxes, etc.), and changing from a consumable goods economy to a services economy. By taxing corporations for their environmental foot-print, they can no longer use natural capital as if its a free or cheap resource. This means that in order for the prices of products to remain competitive, companies would instead compete for reducing environmental foot-prints to increasing their profit. We know how innovative companies can be when it comes to making a profit, and if their profit was at stake with this new legislation, they would compete to improve truly "green" technologies. Over time companies would find ways to save money by doing things in a more sustainable manner. As for transforming a consumable goods-based economy to a service-based economy, we would have products re-used, recycled, and designed with a "lease" in mind. That is, we would design cars, electronics, etc. so that rather than using it til' it breaks and throwing it away, we use a product for a certain amount of time and have an industry designed to repair and re-use many of these materials. People would never buy a refrigerator or automobile, rather they would lease it. At the end of the lease, when it is returned to the company that produced it, they would repair it or harvest the materials for new products. This dramatically reduces waste and thus minimizes the use of natural capital. Furthermore, by using renewable energy as our primary (if not only) source of energy, again we have a sustainable model that will work for posterity. In a nutshell, we can have capitalism as well as sustainability, as long as we implement legislation that supports a "natural capitalism" business model. The book is a bit' of a dry read, but provides many examples of how the industry is changing, and what needs to be done if we are to have any hope of maintaining a quality of life that first-world nations have become accustomed to.

This book was full of amazing examples of business foresight that is driving the green revolution. This book lays out a blueprint for the next inevitable industrial revolution that will shock both liberal and conservative ideology and economics. I highly recommend it, but it's a little old now (1999). I'm looking into how things have gone since then, and I'm finding more updated books on the topic.