Our ecosystems contribute tens of trillions of dollars to our economy every year, but – as L. Hunter Lovins notes... At present we’re losing every major ecosystem on the planet…What are we doing to ourselves?...We have the…intelligence…to make different choices.” In this interview, she outlines those choices and shares how they benefit businesses and the planet. Hunter Lovins co-authored the best-selling book, Natural Capitalism, with Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins. One of the biggest challenges to living sustainably, says Lovins,…
Tag Archives natural resources
Economic growth is the number one public policy goal around the world, yet our pursuit of growth is “pulling out the rug from our own kids’ and grandkids’ future,” according to Brian Czech, founder and president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. He wants us to understand economic growth is physically impossible to sustain on a finite planet, it’s depleting nonrenewable natural resources and degrading or eliminating crucial habitat for other species. Czech authored Shoveling…
Our computer-generated scenarios all showed this growth stopping in the early decades of the 21st century, and, I must say, looking back now, it seems that we're right on schedule.” Dennis Meadows led the team at MIT whose computer simulations led to the publication of the top-selling environmental book of all time – The Limits to Growth. Scientists built on Jay Forester’s pioneering system dynamics work to chart future trends of five variables, analyzing how they would influence one another.…
Today it could be argued that human beings daily act against our own self-interest. How? Biologist Paul Ehrlich and fellow scientists tell us we are expanding our population and economy beyond the Earth's carrying capacity– at our peril. Why do we insist on continuing? Humanity in the last few hundred years has become the dominant animal on this planet. We are changing...the atmosphere to the point where we’re threatening our very sustainability, we are now mobilizing most minerals more rapidly…