Paul Hawken

This man is one of the greatest influences in my life.   I read Paul Hawken's first book, The Next Economy when I was a kid. A few years later, it was The Ecology of Commerce.

Paul Hawken

His next book, co-authored with Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, was Natural Capitalism.   I was so taken with this book, this idea,  that I traveled to the Bay area across from San Francisco and met with Paul Hawken.  I was hoping to do a documentary series based on Natural Capitalism. Paul is a terrific human being and he was amenable to working with me. He said get Amory and Hunter on board and we'll do it. So, I traveled to Aspen and tried to make it happen. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, but I still believe Natural Capitalism is an extraordinarily important concept, that must be embraced by the human culture worldwide as part of a transition to a sustainable relationship with the biosphere.

Paul Hawken was a principle founder of The Natural Step, a very worthy non-profit focused on facilitating a new paradigm  in corporate behavior, based on a natural kind of capitalism.

More recently, Paul Hawken wrote a book titled, Blessed Unrest. in which he identfied a powerful movement around the world of organizations and individuals committed to social justice and restoring the environment. A worthy outgrowth of Blessed Unrest is Wiser Earth, a social network for sustainability that serves people around the world.  Wiser Earth is another effort that was started by Paul Hawken.

If I was the commissar,  loaded to the gills with chutzpah - you know, the kind of guy that runs North Korea - if I had that kind of power to put somebody in charge and fix the mess we've made of human civilization, the person I would pick is Paul Hawken.