[lbo-talk] Natural Capitalism

[Damian White]

I wrote a left-green-ish critique/review of the debate around Natural
Capitalism and Factor Four about a decade ago. (D.F.White,2002 'A Green
Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global
Age', Environmental Politics 11(2): 1–26).I’ll happy dig out the pdf and
send on to whoever wants it. It’s a problematic text in many, many ways. The
social science underpinning the text is lite - standard market friendly
green management written for sunny business school types mixed with a bit of
technological determinism . As Gar suggests, it’s all stripped of any
interest in the politics of technology and design that Commoner (and
Bookchin brought to the debate in the 60s and 70s. Lovins is nevertheless an
interesting figure and he and his co-authors in the book length version did
a good job of popularizing industrial ecology and a range of other eco-tech
and eco-design possibilities that are perfectly sane and should be
incorporated into any viable leftist future project. It’s a shame that so
much of the ecological left today is still so mired in various modes of
Malthusianism, catastrophism, technophobia or social reductionism that it
can’t make intelligent recuperative critiques of this literature.

Damian White

Associate Professor of Sociology,

Department of History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences,

The Rhode Island School of Design,

http://departments.risd.edu/hpss/White.html

damianfwhite at gmail.com