209 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
209 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Review of 'Natural Capitalism' ] [ By Eric Chaet ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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Review of "Natural Capitalism" by Hawken, Lovins and Lovins.
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by Eric Chaet
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"Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution"
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by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins (Boston:
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Little, Brown and Company, 1999).
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The importance of this book will fade in 10, 20, or 30 years, I suppose, as
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there are more and greater ecological catastrophes, and as there is more and
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wider understanding, and as people change what they do in relation to
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"natural capital" - preventing other catastrophes. But right now, it's one
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of those rare books that really re-focus and mentally "arm" its readers -
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more than just outlining either the problem or possible solutions.
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It presents the necessary, possible, and practical changes - the new kinds
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of cars, homes, communities, factories, farming, cities - the altered use of
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water and electricity - current and altered financial accounting ("whole
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system life-cycle costing") and political out-look - new materials and new
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designs.
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The authors are technically, commercially, financially, politically,
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ethically astute, and communicate with precision, clarity, and elegance.
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"The loss of natural capital services [what we get from nature without
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accounting for or paying for it] is already imposing severe costs. Despite
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the convoluted economic theories and accounting systems that have been
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devised to persuade ourselves that they aren't a significant problem, those
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costs are starting to become apparent, undeniable, and unavoidable..."
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"By current economic definitions, most industrial, environmental, and social
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waste is counted as gross domestic product right alongside TV's, bananas,
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cars, and Barbie dolls. Growth includes ALL expenditures, regardless of
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whether society benefits or loses... the experts reassure us that more of
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this type of growth will save us from the very ills this type of growth
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creates."
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"A stable oak-hickory forest['s] economy sustains a high stock of diverse
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forms of biological wealth, while consuming relatively little input.
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Instead, its myriad niches are all filled with organisms busily sopping up
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and remaking every crum of detritus into new life."
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"...[O]nly one percent of the total North American materials flow ends up
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in, and is still being used within, products six months after their sale.
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That roughly one percent materials efficiency is looking more and more like
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a vast business opportunity.... The next business frontier is rethinking
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everything we consume: what it does, where it comes from, where it goes,
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and how we can keep on getting its service from a net flow of very nearly
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nothing at all - but ideas."
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"America has $6 trillion worth of houses whose thermal efficiency rests on a
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methodological design error."
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"... [S]uperinsulation, superwindows, ventilation heat recovery... deep
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daylighting..."
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Waste, per Taiichi Ohno, as articulated by Womack and Jones: "...mistakes
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which require rectification, production of items no one wants so that
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inventories and remaindered goods pile up, processing steps which aren't
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actually needed, movement of employees and transport of goods from one place
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to another without any purpose, groups of people in a downstream activity
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standing around waiting because an upstream activity has not delivered on
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time, and goods and services which don't meet the needs of the customer."
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"...[E]very input had to be presumed waste until shown otherwise. Once
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Interface started measuring its inputs, it discovered that most of them were
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indeed waste. The more the company learned about the potential for
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radically simpler processes, the larger the fraction of apparent waste
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became. Workers throughout the company started mining the newly visible
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waste.... Lean production makes people happier[,]...people...feel best when
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their activity involves a clear objective, intense concentration, no
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distractions, immediate feedback on their progress, and a sense of
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challenge."
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"In the face of this relentless loss of living systems, fractious political
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conflicts over laws, regulations, and business economics appear petty and
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small. It is not that these issues are unimportant but that they ignore the
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larger context. Are we or are we not systematically reducing life and the
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capacity to re-create order on earth? ... [I]t is ultimately the capacity of
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the photosynthetic world and its nutrient flows that determine the quality
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and the quantity of life on earth."
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Revise tax codes, which embody "perverse incentives" to eliminate labor and
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savings, and to ravage the environment.
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Selling a service - for instance, warmth or "coolth" - rather than a product
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- for instance, a furnace or air conditioner - therefore, having the
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incentive to reduce the cost by every possible efficiency measure, and
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pocketing the resulting saving as profit. Better processes and more
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efficient uses.
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"The goal of natural capitalism is to extend the sound principles of the
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market to all sources of material value, not just to those that by accidents
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of history were first appropriated into the market system. It also seeks to
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guarantee that all forms of capital are as prudently stewarded as money is
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by the trustees of financial capital."
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Markets "... allocate scarce resources efficiently over the short term...
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[N]atural capitalism changes the list of which resources are genuinely
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scarce..."
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"Because neoclassical economics is concerned only with efficiency, not with
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equity, it fostered an attitude that treated social justice as a frill,
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fairness as passe', and the risks of creating a permanent underclass as a
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market opportunity for security guards and gated 'communities.' Its
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obsession with satisfying nonmaterial needs by material means revealed the
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basic differences, even contradictions, between the creation of wealth, the
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accumulation of money, and the improvement of human beings."
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"Some market theologians promote the fashionable conceit that governments
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should have no responsibility for overseeing markets... The latest
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illustrations of that principle include the Wild West wreck now looming in
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Russia, mad-cow disease, savings and loan fraud, phone scams, and crash-by-
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night airlines... A dose of empiricism is in order."
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"The chief engineer of a huge chip-plant design firm was once told by phone
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about such proven technologies as a cleanroom that uses manyfold less energy
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yet performs better, costs less, and builds faster. His rapid-fire reply:
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'Sounds great, but I pay a $100,000-an-hour penalty if I don't have the
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drawings for our next plant done by Wednesday noon, so I can't talk to you.
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Sorry. Bye.' The sad and ubiquitous result is 'infectious repetitis' - the
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copying of old drawings - which leaves huge savings untapped."
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"How much do you pay... for a kilowatt-hour of electricity, and how many
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kilowatt-hours does your refrigerator - typically the biggest single user in
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the household - consume each year? If you don't know, because you're too
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busy living to delve into such minutiae, then you're part of [a] market
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barrier..."
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"One of the best methods to start reducing the self-deception that
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accompanies subsidies and other distortions is to account scrupulously for
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the factors that economists call externalities. Nobody knows exactly how
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much value to place, say, on the effects of air pollution on human health or
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on ecosystems. But...zero is not the right number.... Until the 'polluter
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pays' principle...is actually implemented in energy pricing, however, prices
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will continue to reflect the tacit assumption that, as...Randy Udall puts
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it, 'the future is worthless and the environment doesn't matter.'
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Calculations of cost-effectiveness based solely on private internal cost
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will continue to be 'a value system masquerading as mathematics.'"
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"For every activity there is an abatement, arguably meriting a value and a
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market in which to express it. Few of those markets yet exist, but creating
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them can make traders prosper and all of us better off. Making markets in
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saved resources and avoided pollution can support powerful entrepreneurial
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innovations that can turn each obstacle to resource productivity and loop-
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closing into an opportunity. The bigger the problem, the bigger the
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potential gain..."
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"Conceptual tests of new ideas lead quickly to their application. Risks are
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taken in the expectation that mistakes will be made, quickly detected and
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diagnosed, and corrected. When budgets can't support an entire new program,
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it's launched anyway so that learning can begin while more resources or
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economies are sought. Failures are frequent, hard lessons constant,
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struggles to improve unrelenting... persistent application of whole-system
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thinking..."
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"...[A]s [Jaime] Lerner [mayor of Curitiba, Brazil] insists: 'If people feel
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respected, they will assume responsibility to help solve other problems.'
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Closing the broken loop of politics, this principle recycles the poor and
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hungry, the apathetic and illiterate, into actively contributing citizens."
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"...[W]hat is worth producing, what will make us better human beings, how we
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can stop trying to meet nonmaterial needs by material means, and how much is
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enough."
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"How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is
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cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them
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both? Is it rational to have a pricing system that discounts the future and
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sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confuses
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capital liquidation with income? Wasting resources to achieve profits is
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far from fair, wasting people to achieve higher GDP doesn't raise standards
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of living, and wasting the environment to achieve economic growth is neither
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economic nor growth."
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #564 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #564
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Call RIPCO ][ -> +1-773-528-5020
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