Author Paul Hawken, whose latest book, The Ecology of Commerce, is being lauded for its hopeful vision of a truly sustainable economy, was the keynote speaker at the Solar Energy Association of Oregon annual conference in Portland in August.

A highly successful entrepreneur, whose company, Smith and Hawken, won every possible award for environmental stewardship, Hawken reported that they had nevertheless only moved about 1% toward sustainability. Stating emphatically that "business is destroying the earth," he said this finding made him realize that simply enlightening the heads of corporations was insufficient. He set about rethinking the problem.

Listing the bad news first, Hawken noted that every living system on earth is in decline, with the rate of decline growing exponentially. If we try to provide the U.S. standard of living worldwide with the present rate of population growth -- 1.7 % yr., he said, we will have to replicate the current industrial base 16-22 time -- 20 times Gary, Indiana; 20 times the Ruhr Valley, 20 times every single factory, coal mine, etc.

It can't be done.

Yet, while economists hold detailed discussions about calculating the profits of Hong Kong textile companies so as to protect U.S. textile companies, nobody discusses the fact that industrial civilization will consume the planet within our lifetime.

Hawken's good news is that the problem is a design problem -- not a bad person problem or an economic problem or a bad politics problem -- and it can be fixed. Hawken says the problem is that the industrial system is linear -- it takes resources and transforms them into products, assuming an infinite pool of resources and an infinite sink in which to dump the wastes. We know, he said, that all linear systems expend themselves and perish, that they are not, by definition, sustainable. Yet every economic act is linear.

Hawken believes we are in a transition from linear to cyclical systems of manufacturing, from a least-price to a least-cost system, from a hydrocarbon-based to a carbohydrate-based society.

Cyclical systems are nature's systems -- everything that is, is constantly transformed -- reused, recycled, regenerated -- there is no waste. Hawken listed three basic principles of cyclical systems:

(1) all waste has to equal food (one product's waste is the raw material for another);

(2) we must operate on current solar income;

(3) the system will depend upon and create in turn, diversity, both in social and in natural systems.

He cited two critical objectives in this process.

First, throughput in the industrial countries must be reduced by 80% in the next 40-50 years -- or we will outstrip the planet's carrying capacity within our lifetime. But he asserted that is possible right now - we have the technology; it's just not implemented.

Second, the number, quality and meaningfulness of jobs must be increased worldwide. The 1.7 billion people currently in the world's workforce will be joined by another 1.7 billion within the next 20 years. There are nearly a billion people now who need work and can't get it. The last time unemployment was this high in Europe was in the 20s and 30s; fascism was the result.

Our rapidly occurring social degradation is intimately connected to environmental degradation, and if we're going to be serious as environmentalists, we must create jobs. Hawken scolded environmentalists for letting the right wing take the high moral ground on key issues, marginalizing environmental goals.

First, whenever environmentalists raise an issue, conservatives accuse them of destroying jobs. Second, they always talk about lower taxes. Environmentalists should be talking about lower taxes, says Hawken, because they're talking about a sustainable world, a world that doesn't need to be re-mediated by government.

Environmentalists should be the ones saying "we want lower taxes, we want fewer subsidies, we want less governmental interference because we want to design a world that works better." The conservatives talk about community and family values and mom and apple pie, but it's environmentalists who have the means to recreate and restore community.

Industrialism was a marvelous job-creating mechanism, said Hawken, but things have changed. Real income in the U.S. is the same in 1994 as it was in 1967. Industrialism's emphasis on productivity -- having each person produce more and more and more -- is making more and more and more people redundant and useless. Economic growth is purchased by using machinery, technology and energy to transform our natural capital -- our natural resources -- into more and more goods per person at the expense of the planet and social welfare. Chronic unemployment is built into the industrial system.

Based on the criteria for sustainability -- reducing throughput and increasing employment -- the job of environmentalists is to demonstrate that the only way we can create jobs -- good jobs, family wage jobs, jobs that people can count on, meaningful jobs -- is to reduce the throughput and reduce the amount of resources we use per unit of economic activity.

For no matter which industry we're talking about, when one compares a sustainable industry with a non-sustainable one, the sustainable one is more labor-intensive and costs less. The price may not be less, but it costs less.

To illustrate, Hawken reminded his audience of the definition of income in economics -- what you can spend without touching your capital. The solar energy business is based on current solar income, but it's competing on a price basis with people who are liquidating their capital -- not theirs -- ours. The solar industry is competing against a once-in-a-billion-year blow-out carbon sale. It's like opening up a store next to a huge chain that's going out of business, and everything is being sold at less than cost.

So on a price basis, people say renewable energy is not affordable. Well, a barrel of Kuwaiti oil costs $92/barrel -- $16-17 for the Kuwaitis and $75 for the DOD to keep the sea lanes open. $75 of our taxes subsidizes Texaco, Mobil and Exxon. We're paying the price all right -- it's just hidden.

Recognizing the difference between least-cost and least-price is essential to changing the system, of explaining to people that there is a better way of doing things, said Hawken. The new industrial revolution is going to be measured, not by smokestacks going up, but by smokestacks going down, not by molecular garbage going in the air, but by molecular garbage being removed from the air - or not going there in the first place; not measured by the throughput of materials but by the delivery of products, services, and the quality of life people want. This world must evolve -- by default or by choice. Will we do it by design, he asked, or by going from crisis to crisis to worse crisis?

If the latter, "we will use more and more of our natural capital, which will become more and more expensive. We will spend more and more of our tax money dealing with pollution and social degradation. We're going to use capital that should be invested in sustainability on bandaids and end-of-pipe clean-up. We're going to go broke, and we are going broke."

Hawken noted that both linear and cyclical systems have second- and third-order effects. In the former, they're always trouble, and as ecosystems decline, the positive feedback loops click in and accelerate the rate of degradation. In the latter, the effects are usually benign.

In one city, where stormwater was overwhelming the sewage plant and dumping sewage into the river, the EPA mandated the building of a secondary wastewater treatment plant -- a classic linear system -- rain falls, goes into the street, down the drain, out the pipe, and through a treatment plant which consumes $4-5 million/yr. in energy alone.

The usual response is to build an $80 million plant and tax everyone's run- off by square foot of roof space. Hawken' associates pointed out that taxing by the square foot does not provide a positive, but a negative incentive. They advised taxing by gallon of run-off as an incentive to halt the run-off. So, parking lots were replaced with hexagonal concrete tubes based in gravel beds and planted with grass to absorb the run-off. Lots were sloped inward, channeling excess water to water-loving trees. The parking lots became parks.

Then they discovered another second-order effect -- the added greenery lowered the ambient temperature, saving the city nearly as much in air conditioning costs as the project cost. Instead of paying $80 million to Bechtel -- which all goes out of the city -- they employed a plan whose second- and third-order effects employed local people, kept the money in the community, reduced the temperature, and improved the quality of life.

The environmental community has been very effective in describing the problems, but it's scared people, made them cynical and wary, as if they've been given a diagnosis of terminal cancer. It is essential, Hawken asserted, to create a vision that's inclusive of people, that doesn't demand they change their belief systems, that gets the word out that cyclical systems are win-win-win systems, that switching from non- renewable to renewable, from hydrocarbons to carbohydrates, from carboniferous to current solar income is a win for the Fortune 500; it's a win for small businesses; it's a win for cities; it's a win for individuals; it's a win for people who have been marginalized by industrialism.

The principles cyclical systems are based on don't belong to any group; they're not political beliefs; they're not religious beliefs; they're not controversial; they are timeless. What is missing is a design strategy for embedding them into how we make our products, how we distribute them, how we interact with natural living systems. We have to take responsibility for promoting and disseminating these principles as quickly and as effectively as possible to all levels of society. "It's a big responsibility, Hawken said, "but it's a very hopeful one -- extremely hopeful."

Hen Cackles

©Wanda Ballentine