Good Will Hunter
Hunter Lovins
As Natural Capitalism Solutions celebrates its tenth anniversary, Hunter Lovins reflects on what has changed in the sustainability world over the past decade, how companies have woken up to the profitability of sustainability, why things are going to get worse before they get better, and how small businesses and cities may hold the key to climate protection. Ilana Lipsett and Zach Sharpe of Sustainable Industries spoke with Lovins, and invite you to continue the conversation. Lovins will be answering reader questions through Friday, December 21, and we will publish her answers on this site. Please submit any questions or comments in the comments section below.
Sustainable Industries: In your opinion, what is the most pressing sustainability challenge we are facing right now?
Hunter Lovins: Bill McKibben is right: It’s climate. We solve this one or we lose life as we know it on this planet. Three of the earth’s ecosystems are tipping into collapse: coral reefs, oceans, and the Amazon. If we continue business as usual, by the end of the century there will be no coral reefs because of warming water. The oceans are acidifying, and the Amazon is warming and drying. We could lose the earth’s lungs.
There are many challenges facing us. All of the worse ones tend to be tied to climate change. And it’s frustrating because as my recent book, The Way Out: Kick-starting Capitalism to Save Our Economic Ass, has shown, we have all the solutions. Implementing them would make us a great deal of money. ... And at the end of the day, if climate change is a hoax we’ll just make a lot of money.
SI: How have you seen behaviors toward sustainability change in the last 10 years?
Lovins: We help companies understand the business case [for sustainability] and this is almost no longer a debate. We’ve gone from…arguing that there is a business case. Now it’s been proven. We have a report called Sustainability Pays. It’s a study of studies: 45 studies that show leaders in ESG have 25% higher stock value than less sustainable competitors, have the fastest growing stock value. They are well protected from value erosion even in a down economy. When those wild-eyed environmentalists from Goldman Sachs tell you that sustainable leaders are outperforming less sustainable peers, it’s a business case.
All the big academic business journals are talking about it. In the Harvard Business Review a study concluded that sustainability is not the burden on the bottom line it always was thought to be. It’s the touchstone of all of innovation. In the future, only companies that make it a goal will achieve a competitive advantage. MIT Sloan said much the same thing. When there are 45 [studies], the argument is over. There is a business case for sustainability.
Now the question is how do you implement it? That’s the work Natural Capitalism does. We work in 30 countries, in companies, and in communities around the world helping them implement more sustainability practices in ways that are profitable.
Comments
Great interview!
I've studied and followed sustainability for years now and am fully on board. It strikes me though that so much of the ideas almost seem common sense, and certainly logical. Why is there such resistance to the idea? Does it require a belief and understanding of our interconnected nature?
As a follow-on, I (and I know thousands of others are too), want to work in the sustainability field. I am ready to give up a lucrative and specialized set of knowledge to work in this arena. However, it strikes me that really anyone can do this type of work. From a career perspective, am I looking at this all wrong, is it silly to give up a specialized skill set and get into this field (even if just to see if I like it)?
Love the article. As Hunter says there have been many steps forward in sustainability, but also many setbacks. With such scary corporate abuses and depressing climate and environmental data coming out every day, it is easy to want to give up and call it a day. What keeps you going? guessing the whiskey in the picture might help
As a writer (and researcher) I began looking at climate change years ago. The media is beginning to publish online and in print more and more about climate change. but all too often it still lags behind. We need to concentrate on creating a unified chorus that cannot and will not be ignored. There still remains a vast portion of the public who hear little or nothing of the positive changes, applications and systems that are being put into practice.
The US military is a big polluter, but they are also invested in developing and employing alternative energy. Little of that is known by the greater public. Since the 70s many of the current and retired upper echelon have been 'gaming' climate change effects on food, flash migration, water and unrest both globally and internationally. As large portion of Americans are invested emotionally in this branch of the government, targeting influencers who are still serving and former military to help inform the public through media could prove to be effective. With two degrees of warming and the changes that will have on food sources and potential unrest, initiating alliances will offer the opportunity to build alliances that could promote more positive change.
In particular, it would help if the daily visitors to homes of citizens - the television weather forecasters - could be educated about the reality of climate change. This is particularly true, as what most people still don't realize is that there are vast numbers of households in the US without computers and or high speed connections to the Internet. (In the very near future the latter may also suffer from long rolling blackouts, as we saw with Sandy.) This has meant that much of the ongoing environmental media flow has been distributed and shared online.
Bottom line, as it was in Germany and historically in the US, the kind of movement we need toward positive outcomes depends on the will of the people. We do seem to be gathering momentum, but without a well thought out and focused strategy for engaging the media, it's going to take longer than what we would wish.
Awesome article! Hunter has been speaking and demonstrating this vision for longer than most people have been alive: from her days writing letters in kindergarten to try to stop the mining of Black Mesa, to opposing war, to planting trees, founding RMI (which, though based on the work of her former husband was always Hunter's idea--we used to joke that her purpose, in founding the Institute was to translate Amory into English, which she's done a pretty good job of! ), to the wonderful work of Natural Capitalism Solutions, Hunter truly is a Hero for the Planet, a green business icon, and an inspiring big sister for us all! Keep it up, Hunter!
Einstein 2 Corb: Phi "makes difficult job easier" - as Asynsis principle does 4 Constructal nature&culture design law http://asynsis.wordpress.com
https://twitter.com/ASYNSIS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tAZe6pP-FM&feature=youtu.be
An exceptionally well proportioned TEDx talk Matthew Cross, thank you!
So an optimal law of beauty is now also a green law of nature.
It's urgently time for it to also become the basis for laws of man whilst hacking the price mechanism with the evolving flow optimisations of regulated, feed-back responsive, natural capitalism , just as Polly Higgins & Charles Eisenstein advocate.
http://positivenews.org.uk/2012/economics_innovation/10123/sacred-discus...
http://www.facebook.com/AsynsisSustopiaInitiative
The treasure we have to share is our co-discovery of the Asynsis principle-Constructal law, of nature evolving sustainable complexity in flowing more easily, yet with greater power, of nature's behaviours guided by the dynamic, analogically optimal geometries of the golden ratio; sculpting flowing energy, matter and information over time. http://asynsis.wordpress.com/ http://constructal.org/
Some people are saying that the Goldman Sachs and other studies on the value of corporate sustainability point to a correlation, not causation. Is there a causal relationship?
Climate change is going to be a majorly disruptive to supply chains and business operations. When do you think we will see businesses taking that threat seriously and acting on it, both internally and externally? Will we ever see the business community pushing for climate change legislation?
President Obama just announced that climate change will be one of his top priorities in his second term. What are the top three things he could do, from your Presidential Climate Action Report or otherwise, to encourage sustainability in the business community?
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