Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken
Paul Hawkenis an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist ...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEnvironmentalist
Date of Birth8 February 1946
CountryUnited States of America
long environmental path
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.
environmental use way
We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
focus trying pessimistic
If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic.
age information transformation
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.
optimistic heart data
If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven’t got a heart.
healing dark light
You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You're only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing.
powerful thinking practice
We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good.
beef business cattle chains clear developing disease easily forests hamburgers health heart highest longer money per rain raise rate sell spend
When cattle ranchers clear rain forests to raise beef to sell to fast-food chains that make hamburgers to sell to Americans, who have the highest rate of heart disease in the world (and spend the most money per GNP on health care), we can say easily that business is no longer developing the world. We have become its predator.
air business clean commercial cruise economics equivalent house integral living proud rules sinking stable systems
Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems - clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates - are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship.
matter matters needs proper study
Really, the proper study of economics is fulfilment, not consumption... It doesn't even matter if it's a green product or a green house... It's still consumption. What matters in this world is the fulfilment of people's needs and the fulfilment of their aspirations.
change despair environmental evoke fear milieu responses
The responses that environmentalists evoke - fear, anxiety, numbness, despair - are not helpful, even if they are understandable. It should be fascinating, even enthralling, to be in the milieu of environmental change.
biological extinction
Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no voice other than our own.
asthma begun breathe diet discovered eating felt hamburger normal since six sneak stopped tried weeks
Hindered by asthma since I was six weeks old, I had begun experimenting with my diet and discovered a disquieting correlation. When I stopped eating the normal American diet of sugar, fats, alcohol, chemicals, and additives, I felt better. I could breathe freely. When I tried to sneak in a hamburger and a Coke, my body rebelled.
change leadership luther martin nelson next terms trained
We're trained to see the world in terms of charismatic organizations and charismatic people. That's who we look to for leadership and change, for transformation. We're awaiting the next J.F.K., the next Martin Luther King, the next Gandhi, the next Nelson Mandela.