L. Hunter Lovins

Natural Capitalism Solutions · President

The concept of ‘wellbeing economy’ (WE), that is, an economy that pursues human and ecological wellbeing instead of material growth, is gaining support amongst policymakers, business, and civil society. Over the past couple of years, several national governments have adopted the WE as their guiding framework to design development policies and asses...

Business education should give students the skills to solve complex global challenges. It should align management practices with goals for a sustainable future. Sadly, few management schools even discuss the real issues business leaders face today. This article challenges others to develop a curriculum that embeds sustainability in the core of thei...

The 10-Point Action Plan to catalyse a Circular Bioeconomy of Wellbeing is a call for collective and integrated action to global leaders, investors, companies, scientists, governments, non- governmental and intergovernmental organisations, funding agencies and society at large to put the world on a sustainable path.

Some countries have been more successful than others at dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. When we explore the different policy approaches adopted as well as the underlying socio-economic factors, we note an interesting set of correlations: countries led by women leaders have fared significantly better than those led by men on a wide range of dime...

In the last 50 years, the biosphere, upon which humanity depends, has been altered to an unparalleled degree. The current economic model relying on fossil resources and addicted to “growth at all costs” is putting at risk not only life on our planet, but also the world’s economy. The need to react to the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis is a unique o...

In the last 50 years, the biosphere, upon which humanity depends, has been altered to an unparalleled degree[i]. The current economic model relying on fossil resources and addicted to “growth at all costs” is putting at risk not only life on our planet, but also the world’s economy. The need to react to the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis is a unique...

Comment on “Systemic Social Innovation” critiques the paper as being neither particularly systemic not innovative. It lists a dozen examples of systemic collaborations now underway that are more transformative. The Comment also takes issue with the article’s creation of a fifteen-part taxonomy that it asserts is necessary to assess transformative c...

Many observers believe that solar with storage, plus EVs, are emerging as the inevitable future of the energy economy. How fast could this transition occur? This paper reviews the Solar Dominance Hypothesis (SDH). The SDH argues that solar, storage, and related energy and business model innovations are fundamentally disruptive, not incremental tech...

Topics: Economy Export Citation Toward a Sustainable Wellbeing Economy Volume 9 | Issue 2 | April 2018 By Robert Costanza, Elizabeth Caniglia, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Ida Kubiszewski, Henry Lewis, Hunter Lovins, Jacqueline McGlade, Lars Fogh Mortensen, Dirk Philipsen, Kate Pickett, Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir, Debra Roberts, Paul Sutton, Katherine Trebe...

Purpose This paperaims to review how the field of lean and green has been evolving. Authors draw parallels between the fields of sustainability and quality management. The paper’s title is borrowed and modified from Crosby’s seminal book: Quality is Free. Design/methodology/approach The paper starts with a review on how early lean researchers in t...

The paper argues that if humanity is to survive looming system collapse we need a new narrative of what it means to be human, how to organize our economy and how to create a world that works for everyone. The report outlines the challenges created by our current neo-liberal economic narrative. It provides corporate and leadership solutions that can...

Unsustainable business practices endanger our own survival. Current business, rooted in the toxic neo-liberal narrative is endangering life as we know it. This piece, invited by the Open Working Group of the United Nations to help it frame the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), sketches the pillars of a regenerative narrative for business th...

We stand on the cusp of the biggest transformation of our lives. Humanity is in a horse race against catastrophe. The bad news is all around us from loss of species to global warming, social fragmentation, and growing inequality. The good news is that we’re in the race. And we might just be winning. The speed with which renewable energy, especially...

In this symposium five leading management thought leaders will present their perspectives on the future of governance of the Academy of Management itself. Starting off, two former presidents of the Academy of Management (Don Hambrick and Anne Tsui) will represent an internal perspective on how opening governance can help the AOM itself. Then two pu...

When it was conceived, Gross Domestic Product (‘GDP’) was a useful signpost on the path to a better world. Increased economic activity meant jobs, income, and basic amenities to reduce worldwide social conflict and prevent a third world war. But now, economic activity has created a world very different from the one faced by global leaders at their...

Communities, countries, and the planet as a whole need to articulate shared goals, and create ways to track progress in meeting them. This is the essence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process currently underway at the UN. The SDGs are the follow-up to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), due to expire in 2015. They represent a...

The global economy is on the edge with 85 people having as much wealth as 3.5bn of the world's poorest. We need a new story of an economy that doesn't trash the planet

Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success. Countries should act now to embrace new metrics, urge Robert Costanza and colleagues.

In June 2012, the latest in a series of United Nations conferences on sustainable development was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this one called “The Future We Want.” As the most recent opportunity to present an equitable solution to climate change and other environmental problems, the declaration that arose from Rio left many cold. It did not go...

L. Hunter Lovins provides her perspectives on the importance of climate change in the water sector and suggests that regardless of opinions about climate change, her research shows that adapting to climate change by making sustainability-minded decisions is profitable. She highlights that climate capitalism is focused on how using resources, whethe...

New developments are converging in unprecedented ways to respond to the climate crisis. The private sector is increasingly addressing environmental, social, and governance issues, encouraged by civil society pressures. National governments need to facilitate these responses by setting standards, supporting research, and providing incentives for the...

No one would run a business without accounting for its capital outlays. Yet most companies overlook one major capital component--the value of the earth's ecosystem services. It is a staggering omission; recent calculations place the value of the earth's total ecosystem services--water storage, atmosphere regulation, climate control, and so on--at $...

In this article, the Lovins’2 explain what is meant by Natural Capitalism, four principles that enable business to behave responsibly towards both nature and people while increasing profits, inspiring their workforce and gaining competitive advantage. It combines radically increased resource productivity; closed-loop, zero-waste, nontoxic productio...

Alaskan politicians have used every oil-price rise since 1973 to push for drilling beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But even putting environmental questions aside, refuge oil is unnecessary, insecure, economically risky, and a distraction from the real energy debate. Market solutions that enhance efficiency can provide secure, safe, and...

Opportunities to wring out waste are expanding faster than they're being used up.

Capitalism is the productive use of and reinvestment in capital; yet capital comprises not only money and goods, but also people and nature, which are even more valuable. Economies seek to economize on the scarcest resource. In the first industrial revolution, that meant people, and labor productivity has been the holy grail ever since. But now wha...

396 p., graph., ref. bib. : 28 p.1/2 In this groundbreaking paradigm for the economy, three leading business visionaries explain how the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution, one that promises to transform our fundamental notions about commerce and its role in shaping our future. Over the past decade many farsighted companies have b...

In the form of an instructive fable, two energy experts expound their trademark ''soft path'' energy philosophy, which is based on cost-effective and energy-sufficient technologies, citizen action, and a free-market economy. In the fable, Eunice Anderson, a budget-conscious housewife from Dubuque, Iowa, is appointed U.S. Secretary of Energy and set...

Domestic energy sources, of any kind and any price, are centralized and hence vulnerable to serious kinds of disruption. Three-fourths of extracted US oil comes from four states (Texas, Alaska, Louisiana, and California); more than half the refinery capacity is in three (Texas, Louisiana, and California); three-fifths of the petrochemical capacity...

The United States is moving with unexpected speed toward a sustainable energy system based on highly efficient energy use and appropriate renewable sources. The free market, though imperfect, is accomplishing the remarkably well. However, institutional barriers are causing underinvestment in money-saving energy options. This retards the energy tran...

Without Abstract

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The authors feel that America's brittle energy system is easily shattered by sabotage, technical failure, or natural disaster; further, the American public needs to understand and correct this vulnerability. Unnecessarily complex and centralized energy systems are at the root of America's energy insecurity, they note, but the proper use of proven c...

The vulnerabilities of the U.S. energy system to accidental or deliberate disruptions are analyzed generically and specifically and shown to be disturbingly large. Since they arise from reliance on highly centralized technologies, increasing such reliance is likely to increase national energy vulnerability. A more efficient, diverse, dispersed, ren...

An energy policy is presented that would solve the CO problem and eliminate dependence on uneconomical fossil fuels by relying on increased efficiency in the use of other energy sources and the use of renewable resources. Many climatologists assume that there will be a massive and increasing use of fossil fuels because most energy planners say it i...

Policies to control the spread of nuclear weapons have assumed that the rapid worldwide spread of nuclear power is essential to replace oil, is both economically desirable and inevitable, and that the international political order must remain inherently discriminatory and dominated by the nuclear arms race. These assumptions are challenged as contr...

The basic assumption that nuclear power is necessary to meet world energy demand is challenged on the grounds that, except for the centrally planned economies, nuclear power is no longer considered to be commercially viable and that it is best to take advantage of the collapse to pursue an alternative program consistent with nonproliferation. Argum...

The authors feel that energy-policy planners should assume surprises and develop a resilient energy system after assessing the vulnerabilities of the present system. The major vulnerability of our dependence on Persian Gulf oil could be relieved by weatherizing buildings and driving fuel-efficient vehicles. Individual actions in these areas can oft...

13 percent of the oil we use comes from the Persian Gulf (which holds two-thirds of the world's petroleum re-serves). Buying the fastest and cheapest replacements is urgent. But replacing insecure foreign oil with insecure new domestic energy sources doesn't help. We will have a secure supply of energy only when we have both displaced Mideast oil a...

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