Climate Capitalism

By L. Hunter Lovins and Eban Goodstein

On October 5, 2011, L. Hunter Lovins participated in The National Climate Seminar, a series of webinars sponsored by Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy. The online seminars provide a forum for leading scientists, writers, and other experts to talk about critical issues regarding climate change. The series also opens a public conversation, inviting participants to ask questions and contribute their own thoughts.

Lovins is President and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS / www.natcapsolutions.org). NCS works with businesses, governments, and civil society to develop practices that are sustainable for both people and the environment. Her lecture focused on ways that the United States can pull itself out of the current recession, while preserving natural and human capital.  

This E-ssential is an edited version of Lovins’ talk and the subsequent question and answer session. While some material has been cut and some language modified for clarity, the intention was to retain the substance of the original discussion. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781610914154

L. Hunter Lovins

L. Hunter Lovins, Time Magazine's Millennium Hero for the Planet, is a business professor, President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, and co-author of The Way Out and the best-selling Natural Capitalism.

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Introduction

On October 5, 2011, L. Hunter Lovins participated in The National Climate Seminar, a series of webinars sponsored by Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy. The online seminars provide a forum for leading scientists, writers, and other experts to talk about critical issues regarding climate change. The series also opens a public conversation, inviting participants to ask questions and contribute their own thoughts.

Lovins is President and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS / www.natcapsolutions.org). NCS works with businesses, governments, and civil society to develop practices that are sustainable for both people and the environment. Her lecture focused on ways that the United States can pull itself out of the current recession, while preserving natural and human capital.

What follows is an edited version of Lovins’ talk and the subsequent question-and-answer session. While some material has been cut and some language modified for clarity, the intention is to retain the substance of the original discussion.

Climate Capitalism

Seminar by L. Hunter Lovins

These are interesting times, are they not? We’ve had young people occupying Wall Street while older activists ask, But what are their demands? We have the complete failure of climate policy at a federal level. We have Greece on the verge of bankruptcy, which is very likely to take down a number of European banks.

So what’s a poor environmentalist to do? It seems to me there are several things that we ought to do. The first is to take a sober look at all that we’ve done and haven’t done. If you find you’re pushing a rope, the solution is to stop. We clearly have been pushing a rope.

We elected what we believed was the most progressive administration in American history and have, so far, been sorely disappointed. We have brilliant people like Dr. John Holdren as a Presidential Science Advisor, a Nobel Laureate as the Secretary of Energy, and great scientists like Holmes Hummel in the Department of Energy, and we’re getting exactly nowhere.

If you find that you’re getting nowhere it behooves you to examine whether your approach is working. God bless the traditional environmentalists who