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We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

Paul Hawken

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Paul Hawken
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: February 8
Environmentalist
Journalist
Writer
San Mateo
California
Paul Gerard Hawken
Humans
Depends
Increasing
Long
Instead
Centuries
Century
Depend
Path
Capital
Upon
Systems
Heading
Natural
Environmental
Headings
Live
Resources
Resource
Human
Toward
Productivity

More quotes by Paul Hawken

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If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down.
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Business is the only mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environments and social degradation.
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The financial capital is being concentrated by corporations, institutional investors, and even our pension funds, and being reinvested in companies that repeat this process because it provides the highest return on that financial capital.
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The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them
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People are naming it the Third Wave, the Information Age, etc. but I would say those are basically technological descriptions, and this next shift is not about technology - although obviously it will be influenced and in some cases expressed by technologies.
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How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
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Natural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night, and we watch television.
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Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
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his planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken.
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That appropriation of resources and the transformation of them into goods and services through the European production system characterized, and characterizes to this day, all industrial systems including the information age.
Paul Hawken
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I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing.
Paul Hawken
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While there may be no right way to value a forest or a river, there is a wrong way, which is to give it no value at all. How do we decide the value of a 700-year-old tree? We need only to ask how much it would cost to make a new one, or a new river, or even a new atmosphere.
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Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity it is a sacred act.
Paul Hawken
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Being in business is not about making money. It is a way to become who you are.
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When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.
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We are losing our living systems, social systems, cultural systems, governing systems, stability, and our constitutional health, and we're surrendering it all at the same time.
Paul Hawken
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We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms — from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use.
Paul Hawken
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We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
Paul Hawken
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Business is correct to defend its right to act in order to produce a vigorous and engaging prosperity. But it is wrong if it forgets that this freedom can only be experienced within the discipline of social responsibility.
Paul Hawken