WC Archive

Paul Hawken, author (with Amory Lovins) of Natural Capitalism,among other books, and founder of sustainability-focused businesses (a longer bio available here), spoke last night at Fort Mason in San Francisco as part of the Long Now Organization's speaker series. His presentation focused initially on the history of the environmental movement in the United States -- a movement that, in his introduction, Stewart Brand credited with first teaching the 20th century to think in the long term. Hawken noted a long-standing tension in environmentalism, between "love of nature" and "alienation from nature;" it's a split, in his view, between whether the economy is a subset of the environment, or whether the environment is a subset of the economy. But he went on to say that the environmental movement, as previously conceived, is no more: it's been replaced. And this is where Hawken's talk shifted from a history lesson to a clarion call.

Hawken articulated, in passionate language, a vision that aligned with and expanded what we've been saying here at WorldChanging: there's a revolution taking place, one which is powered by (and in turn powers) the efforts of thousands of disparate movements, groups, networks, ideas, and people, all over the world. They are distributed and diverse, not focused on ideology or power; in fact, this is the largest movement in history not seeking power. It is mainstream, but not centralized, so it often seems to operate beneath the media radar. It links social justice and environmentalism, activism and science. And it is changing the world.

"Nobody understands the rate and breadth of the environmental degradation that's taking place.

But more important, nobody understands the rate and breadth of humanity's response."

     --Paul Hawken, October 15, 2004

Read on for some more Paul Hawken quotations from the talk.