Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (review)

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. By Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Boston: Little, Brown, 1999. Pp. xix+396. $26.95.

This provocative but flawed book predicts a coming technological revolution that will make capitalism environmentally sustainable. The authors, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, have written extensively on these topics for many years. Hawken, a "green" entrepreneur, is best known for advocating ecologically sound business practices in his thoughtful Ecology of Commerce (1993). Amory Lovins gained international attention in energy policy circles for his 1977 book Soft Energy Paths, and then founded the Rocky Mountain Institute with his spouse Hunter to conduct research into alternative energy technologies.

At the heart of Natural Capitalism is the claim that developed nations can achieve a tenfold or greater increase in the productivity of natural resources, an achievement that will require neither material sacrifice nor any fundamental transformation of economic or political institutions. Increased resource productivity provides the key to solving both environmental and social problems, nearly all of which result from "uneconomically wasteful use of human and natural resources" (p. 10). This increased resource productivity is not only desirable but necessary because of the unsustainable consumption of "natural capital" under the present industrial system. According to the authors, increased resource productivity is intertwined with three other principles of natural capitalism: widespread adoption of "biomimicry," a shift from goods to services, and investments in natural capital, that is, the ability of the biosphere to sustain life.

The book is dominated by examples of technological and business innovations that the authors claim will achieve dramatic increases in resource efficiency while reducing costs. Some of these innovations are well tested and documented, others are little more than design sketches. This parade of brief examples passes through transportation, buildings, wood products, agriculture, water conservation, global warming, and urban planning, as well as holistic design, lean production, and the substitution of services for goods. One case study involves the Hypercar, a design developed by the Rocky Mountain Institute for an ultralight hybrid-electric automobile. On the basis of current technology, the authors claim that within one or two decades automobiles will combine "Lexus comfort and refinement, Mercedes stiffness, Volvo safety, BMW acceleration, Taurus price, four- to eightfold improved fuel economy (that is, 80 to 200 miles per gallon), . . . and zero emissions" (p. 25).

Despite the stunning technological enthusiasm displayed in the discussion of the Hypercar, this book does present a convincing case that alternative technologies can fundamentally reshape human relationships with the material environment. The authors clearly demonstrate the irrationality of resource use under capitalism even on its own terms. For engineers and entrepreneurs, these irrationalities present not obstacles but opportunities for profit through green innovations. For policymakers, overcoming these irrationalities enables combining economic growth and environmental improvement through market mechanisms that more accurately reflect economic externalities. The authors illustrate the successful implementation of such policies with a discussion of the Brazilian city of Curitiba.

Nevertheless, this book will prove problematic to most historians of technology. On the one hand, they may welcome the attention given to technological alternatives, design flexibility, and the expression of human values through technological choice. On the other hand, NaturalCapitalism displays only the vaguest grasp of the complex relationships among technology, society, and culture. One searches in vain for a sophisticated account of the connections among business strategies, markets, and technical choice comparable to recent work in business history by scholars such as Phil Scranton and Jonathan Zeitlin. The authors show no awareness of path-dependence theory, despite its direct relevance to the question of how markets can choose inefficient technologies. Attention to the scholarship on culture and technological choice could have strengthened the book, since the authors are explicitly arguing that new technologies should conform to an environmentally conscious culture. Except for half a paragraph in the preface, the authors display no sensitivity to the issue of technological determinism.

These criticisms are not...