Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change - Hardcover

Lovins, L. Hunter; Cohen, Boyd

 
9780809034734: Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0809034735 ISBN 13: 9780809034734
Verlag: Hill & Wang Pub, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Believe in climate change. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.
But you’d better understand this: the best route to rebuilding our economy, our cities, and our job markets, as well as assuring national security, is doing precisely what you would do if you were scared to death about climate change. Whether you’re the head of a household or the CEO of a multinational corporation, embracing efficiency, innovation, renewables, carbon markets, and new technologies is the smartest decision you can make. It’s the most profitable, too. And, oh yes—you’ll help save the planet.
In Climate Capitalism, L. Hunter Lovins, coauthor of the bestselling Natural Capitalism, and the sustainability expert Boyd Cohen prove that the future of capitalism in a recession-riddled, carbon-constrained world will be built on innovations that cutting-edge leaders are bringing to the market today. These companies are creating jobs and driving innovation.
Climate Capitalism delivers hundreds of indepth case studies of international corporations, small businesses, NGOs, and municipalities to prove that energy efficiency and renewable resources are already driving prosperity. While highlighting business opportunities across a range of sectors—including energy, construction, transportation, and agriculture technologies—Lovins and Cohen also show why the ex–CIA director Jim Woolsey drives a solar-powered plugin hybrid vehicle. His bumper sticker says it all: “Osama bin Laden hates my car.”
Corporate executives, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and concerned citizens alike will find profitable ideas within these pages. In ten information-packed chapters,Climate Capitalism gives tangible examples of early adopters across the globe who see that the low-carbon economy leads to increased profits and economic growth. It offers a clear and concise road map to the new energy economy and a cooler planet.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Named a Time magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet and called by Newsweek“the green business icon,” L. Hunter Lovins is president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and Chief Insurgent of theMadrone Project. Her clients include large companies like Walmart; small companies like Clif Bar; the Pentagon; the United Nations; cities around the world; and the energy minister of Afghanistan, to name just a few. Boyd Cohen is CEO of CO2IMPACT and a former professor of sustainable entrepreneurship in Spain, Costa Rica, and Canada.

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1
Entrepreneuring the Solutions: The Business Case for Climate Protection
Entrepreneurs, companies, and countries are prospering from climate protection even in challenging times. This book describes how you, your family, your community, your company, and the world can profit from Climate Capitalism. The chapters present the good news about how you can become a part of the solution. They show that intelligent use of market mechanisms can solve the climate crisis not at a cost but as an investment, delivering enhanced profitability and a stronger economy as well as a better future for the planet. The best and fastest way to protect the climate is to reduce the unnecessary use of fossil energy. It is also the fastest way to an immediate return on investment. Cutting waste saves money, whether you are a business leader or head of a household.
The case stories that follow demonstrate that entrepreneurship is alive and well. Which is good: without it no solution to climate change makes any sense. It is good for another reason. Entrepreneurs discover opportunity even in the midst of financial crisis. Throughout history, the nations that have innovated to meet human needs have ruled the world, economically, politically, and militarily. How we respond to the twin crises defining our generation—economic collapse and climate change—will very likely determine the world future generations will live in.
The current economic crisis is extremely fluid. It could go in any of several directions. Commitments by global leaders to unleashing the green economy could turn the world around. Conversely, delay in implementing sustainable measures could deepen the current depression, now recognized as the worst since the 1930s.1
Change will occur because past best practices are no longer sufficient to deal with the challenges facing the world. Businesses and industrial policy will implement the measures described in this book, or the world will face crises far exceeding what this young century has already brought.2
The choices you make this year and next will determine whether you, your community, and ultimately your country come out of the economic collapse prosperous and in a position to secure the future you want, or whether life will become an unending reaction to emergencies that batter our ability to cope.3 Recent American history suggests there is reason for hope. The Architecture 2030 project points out:

During the 1970s oil crisis (an 11-year period from 1973 to 1983), this country, drawing on American determination and ingenuity, increased its real GDP by over one trillion dollars (in Year 2000 dollars) and added 30 billion square feet of new buildings and 35 million new vehicles, while decreasing total US energy consumption and CO2 emissions. This was accomplished with increased efficiency and with cost-effective, readily available, off-the-shelf materials, equipment and technology.4

A new reality, now recognized as “the sustainability imperative,” is inexorably driving companies to implement practices that are more responsible to people and the planet because they are more profitable.5 When the likes of Goldman Sachs and Deloitte report that companies leading in environmental, social, and good governance policies have 25 percent higher stock values, change is clearly under way.6 Or when an industry giant such as Walmart begins to require its sixty to ninety thousand suppliers to answer a sustainability scorecard tracking their carbon footprint, their impact on water and other resources, and their engagement with local communities, it is clear that behaving in more sustainable ways has moved from a chic niche position to a business imperative.7
Melting Capital and the Warming Climate
Two words define the current era: “climate” and “capitalism.”
People raised on images of limitless possibilities, muscle cars, Western superiority in world markets, and a rising standard of living watched in shock as General Motors, the iconic American business, melted into bankruptcy in 2008. For many the magnitude of that collapse has yet to sink in. Nor has the recognition that Toyota became the world’s largest car company—subsequently supplanted by Volkswagen in the top spot—by riding to preeminence on the success of fuel-efficient vehicles that seem an affront to everything that made America great. GM’s reemergence from bankruptcy is similarly based on a small electric hybrid. The economic collapse of 2008 devastated communities and families, leaving more than 15 million people out of work, and sent unemployment over 25 percent in Detroit and other cities.8 It made economic recovery almost everyone’s top priority.
Another meltdown, however, poses an even greater threat. In the fall of 2009, the United Nations warned that even if the nations of the world deliver on existing promises to cut emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the globe will still warm beyond levels ever experienced by humankind by the end of the century, perhaps sooner. In his introduction to the film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore called climate change “a moral issue.” But at heart it is neither a moral nor an environmental issue. It is a crisis of capitalism. What is little recognized is that the twin threats, to the climate and to the economy, are linked in both cause and cure. Unless nations move aggressively to implement energy efficiency and renewable energy, key elements of the transition away from fossil fuels and necessary to save the climate, it is difficult to see how our economy can lift itself from recession or avoid further crises. Solving the climate crisis IS THE WAY OUT of the economic crisis.
Capitalism to the Rescue
Critics argue that the science is uncertain. Absolutely. The goal of science isn’t infallibility or unanimity. Scientists don’t know how bad it’s going to be, or how fast climate chaos will proceed. If anything, the science is conservative in its predictions: for example, the observed reality of climate change is outrunning the scientific models, happening faster even than the most alarmed scientists predicted that it would.9
But with all due respect to the great climate scientists, let’s assume that the skeptics are correct. They are not, and you would be a fool to go to Vegas on the odds that they might be, but in a sense, the science is irrelevant. For purposes of argument, let’s assume for a moment that the skeptics are right. If all you are is a profit-maximizing capitalist, you’ll do exactly the same thing you’d do if you were scared to death about climate change because smart companies are recognizing that you don’t have to believe in climate change to believe in its solutions. We know how to solve this problem at a profit: through Climate Capitalism. DuPont was among the early climate capitalists. About a decade ago the company’s leaders pledged to cut its carbon emissions 65 percent below their 1990 levels, and to do it by 2010. That’s a bit more ambitious than the United States, which still refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a pledge to cut emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, will accept.
Has DuPont joined Greenpeace?
No. The company made its announcement in the name of increasing shareholder value.
And it has delivered on its promise. The value of DuPont stock increased 340 percent while the company reduced its global emissions 67 percent. DuPont’s program had by 2007 reduced the company’s emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels. Doing this created a financial savings for the company of $3 billion between 2000 and 2005.10 The...

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Verlag
Hill & Wang Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0809034735
ISBN 13 
9780809034734
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
390
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar