Here's a little "Housewarming Gift", i.e., a news article that may be of interest:

Get rich with ``green'' capitalism-authors

By William Maclean

LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Increasing your profits by being kinder to the environment sounds an unlikely business strategy.

But a book showing how greed can be good for the planet is exciting both energy experts and policy makers. President Bill Clinton, for one, is urging business audiences to read it.

And no, the book -- ``Natural Capitalism : The Next Industrial Revolution'' -- has nothing to do with the current market darlings of e-commerce, biotechnology or the Internet.

Instead, it shows how innovative businesses can reap big productivity gains by behaving as if living systems, such as the supply of oxygen by green plants, were properly valued.

``Humankind has inherited a 3.8 billion year store of natural capital,'' say energy gurus Amory and Hunter Lovins and co-author Paul Hawken.

SAVED ENERGY MEANS BIG BUCKS

``At present rates of use and degradation, there will be little left by the end of the next century.''

The book teems with practical business examples of how industrial processes can be redesigned to cut waste and pollution and sharply boost productivity and energy efficiency.

Natural capital should be stewarded as prudently as money by the trustees of financial capital since environmental damage cannot be repaired by conventional business wisdom, the authors argue.

``That theology treats living things as dead, nature as a nuisance, several billion years design experience as casually discardable and the future as worthless.''

Their new industrialism would consist of a huge rise in the use of recycling, remanufacturing, leasing and emerging technologies that mimic natural processes. Some examples:

Ultra-light hydrogen fuel cell-powered hypercars. The world's biggest car companies are already racing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in development.

``How clean a car would you buy if its exhaust pipe, instead of being aimed at pedestrians, fed directly into the passenger compartment?'' ask the authors.

Engineers have already designed cars that act as plug-in electric generators when they are parked and could become the small scale power plants of the future.

BUILDINGS THAT NEED NO AIR CONDITIONING

The world's supply of lumber and pulp could be grown in an area the size of Iowa if deprintable and reprintable papers and inks, plus innovative ways to use fibre, are adopted fully.

Houses so design efficient no air conditioning is needed.

Goods, like carpets or cars, are leased rather than sold, then returned to the manufacturers when they need replacing.

Building technologies already exist that can make oxygen, generate solar power and produce drinking water, helping owners pay the mortgage while they inhabit them.

Making markets in saved resources like energy, water, fibres, minerals or land, where arbitrageurs exploit the spread between the cost of used materials and saved materials.

Natural capital is defined as the familiar resources used by humanity -- water, minerals, oil, trees, fish, soil and air.

It also means living systems -- wetlands, savannahs, forests, tundra, estuaries and ponds, as well as inhabitants like fungi, fish, bacteria, mammals, amphibians, insects and birds, they say.

For example, a forest provides not only the resource of wood but also the services of water storage and flood management.

They cite estimates that show biological services flowing directly into society from nature are worth $36 trillion annually, close to annual gross world product of $39 trillion.

But some services have no known substitute at any price: For example a healthy environment automatically supplies not only clean air and rainfall but also regeneration of the atmosphere.

The three thinkers estimate that more than 90 percent of the global flow of physical materials used in industrial processes -- some 500 billion tonnes per year -- ends up as waste.

``For all the world to live as an American or Canadian, we would need two more earths to satisfy everyone and three more if population should double,'' the book admonishes.

But far from being eco-warriors, the authors see the profit motive as the best way to turn businesses into agents of environmental revival while maintaining shareholder returns.

They concede that success depends on the reversal of 200 years of policies in taxes, labour, industry and trade meant to encourage extraction, depletion and disposal: Under natural capitalism, any waste sent to a landfill or incinerator would be taxed.

``The atmosphere is not free when there are six billion other people who have to share it near term and untold generations after them. If you want to put gases there, you have to pay.''

Such changes might sound like a tall order but in fact that transformation is already on the way, they say, pointing to multinationals that fund research into climate protection.

``While there may be no right way to value a forest, a river or a child, the wrong way is to give it no value at all.

``If there are doubts about how to value a 700-year-old tree, ask how much it would cost to make a new one.''

03:38 02-15-00

:)

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2000

Answers

Perfect FM!

It's a trend I'm noticing that might be referred to as the "next wave" in eco-awareness. Business as drivers towards sustainability... because it "makes sense" and is a positive impact on the bottom-line.

A win-win.

Diane

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2000

Thank you for invititation. I think I like what I see so far. I am working on developing a website for self-sufficiency on a medium to large scale myself. While being designed for implementation on Indian Reservations, the concepts and strategies would work on any similar community-wide scale as well. I will post a link when complete.

Keep up the good work Diane. :-)

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2000

Thanks Mike.

Would be interested in seeing that when complete!

Diane

BTW, in response to FM's post above, the link to the book at amazon.com is...

Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution
by Paul Hawken

http://www.amazon.com/exec/ obidos/ASIN/0316353167/o/qid=950669176/sr=2-1/103-9230403-6737447

-- Anonymous, February 16, 2000