I've just finished the book, Natural Capitalism. It's pretty rare for me to make it to the end of any business book; 9 times out of 10 the second halves are just a reheated version of the first chapters. Not this time.
The book is great, packed with fascinating examples and is both alarming in its exposition of the threat of climate change and resource depletion yet profoundly optimistic in outlook, citing countless innovations that could turn things round.
Central to the book is the idea of putting some value on the earth's natural resources, something conventional economics is terrible at doing. Hardly unreasonable, you might think.
Likewise, there's an attractive logic to its advocacy of resource efficiency and the aim of elminating waste. In nature, it argues, there is no waste, because everything output in one place is used up someplace else. Yet the last hundred years or so of human progress, for all the benefits they have brought, seem to have violated this principle with far reaching consequences.
The exposition of the vast amounts of material and energy consumed to keep one American (and I daresay anyone else in the developed world) in clothes, food and transport was shocking. I was fascinated by the detailed story of the effort involved in delivering a few mouthfuls of carbonated, sugary water to me in a can (AKA Coca Cola). This certainly made me feel like not buying another one.
I'm left reflecting on how marketing could step up to the plate and support radical resource efficiency. It certainly isn't very efficient in its use of most people's limited amount of attention.
And am I alone is asking myself: shouldn't I be increasingly picky about the sorts of products and services I want to put my own time and effort into promoting...
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Comments (5)
One of my favourite books Johnnie. I use it as a text book for one of my courses.
My students like ti for the same reasons that you and I do - great context and then great ideas of what to do
December 2, 2004 00:43 Permalink for comment
"More picky about products and services you promote..."
I think the question that Jobs asked Scully many years ago gets to the heart of this for us all...
"Do you want to sell sugar water to kids or change the world."
Not that it ended well for either, but the question is something we can all ask ourselves.
I've got X number of projects left before I die or retire, how do I want to invest them?
December 3, 2004 01:02 Permalink for comment
I haven’t read the book, but I am deeply interested in the topic. A societal issue on the same scale as climate change and resource exploitation has got to be waste management (both municipal and industrial). In any of these cases an entrepreneurial paradigm shift is, I think, our last great hope.
I think one of the reasons us economists have failed to put a price on natural resources is that, in many ways, value depends on ownership. Or at least it has. I think open-source software and related ideas are teaching us just how wrong we were about that. But we’ve still got to catch up.
I heard just a few days ago the average American consumes 25 units of natural resources (as a grouping of energy, water, air, etc.) to India’s 5 and China’s 3. That’s startling and unsustainable.
I’m playing with a few models of how to flip resources from free and exploitable to owned and commerciable. Once commerciable, I think the inherent problems of over-use of resources will get better attention. There’s a necessary paradigm shift missing. It will require a deeper understanding of the value of the resource and the value of the system it supports. I think that requires a new kind of economics.
Some links to similar conversations I've enjoyed: here and here
December 4, 2004 03:25 Permalink for comment
Interesting on economist not placing a price on natural resources.
One of the difficulties is that what is a resource and what it's worth are both greatly impacted by knowledge.
The U.S. has plenty of resources, Japan doesn't. But, Japan has knowledge. So, they import our steel, put it through value added processes and sell it back to the U.S. for less than the U.S. can do it itself. A similar equation happens when the swiss take metal, put it through value added processes and sell it back for a thousands times more in the form of a watch. So, what is the core resource worth? In the 70's it was estimated that the world had only 30 years left in oil resources at the max. Then along came fuel injectors and economy cars and the technology to pull oil out of places we couldn't before.. and now we've got like 80 more years of potential reserves despite the dramatic rise in the # of cars on the road.
It's fascinating to me how knowledge multiplies (and defines) what a resource is. That's not a support of wanton waste by the way... just a personal fascination in how knowledge and imagination multiply resources.
For example, once working with a company we did some tweaks to their sales and marketing processes that doubled sales in a month. If you had been interested in buying that company a month before the price would have been X. But, with the new found knowledge they could now ask 2X. That factor, probably more than any other, keeps me so fascinated in marketing, advertising and sales. The X quantity that knowledge, imagination and creativity bring to the table.
December 4, 2004 20:28 Permalink for comment
Many thanks Robert(s) and Jeremy.
This is such a meaty subject, I think I need more time to find a way to respond to match the effort you've put into your comments. I think the issues are incredibly important, and not easy to wrestle to the ground.
December 4, 2004 21:21 Permalink for comment