On Fri, 29 Apr 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Apr 29, 2011, at 8:04 PM, Ismail Lagardien wrote:
>
>> I was invited to a meeting to launch this book, today. Would like to
>> know what people think of this. The invitation came with a copy of a
>> 1999 essay, "Roadmap for Natural Capitalism" published in the Harvard
>> Business Review, if anyone is interested. Not sure if I could/should
>> attach it.
>>
>> Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul
>> Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
>
> Wow, this sounds like something to kick around the block a few times.
> Alex Cockburn once described Paul Hawken as a purveyor of teak-handled
> mulchers for the better sorts. Smith & Hawken
> <http://www.smithandhawken.com/> used to be an upscale brand (thus
> Cockburn's epithet), but they now seem to be vending through Target.
Yes, but my impression is that Hawkens mainly provides the money and the Lovins mainly provide the brains. And the Lovins are not stupid. Granted they are deluded to the extent that they think that eco-capitalism (what they call natural capitalism) might be mostly sold to capitalists on rational cost-saving grounds. But their rational arguments in themselves are often very interesting, both in terms of economics and technology, and it's usually very easy to synthesize them with a more muscular approach, where we consider it a sine non qua for the state to have a robust regulation and subvention regime that forces new behavior, and then business adapts to the new framework.
Lovins's article "Forget Nuclear" was cited last month on lbo in re nuclear after the Japan quake:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20110314/002764.html
And it's pretty good: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-04_ForgetNuclear
If you're interested in background, Elizabeth Kolbert did a very good long profile of Lovins in the New Yorker a few years back:
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2007-01-22#folio=034
If you aren't a subscriber, contact me off list and I'll give you my password.
Anyway, I expect it's the kind of a book that has both very smart stuff and very dumb stuff and thus might make for great discussions. I would it to provide the perfect fodder for a radical engaging with liberals, which is probably exactly why they invited Ismail :-)
And for that matter, I'd love to hear Amory Lovins interviewed by Doug on his show and see how well he defended himself against tough questioning. It might make for first class radio.
Michael