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Hunter Lovins:
Why Value Nature? It’s Better to be Roughly Right than Really Wrong
“Business defines capital as money or assets that can be used (often as means of production) to create ever more wealth. It’s worth noting that the word “wealth” derives from the old English “weal,” or well-being, which is what we ought really to be enhancing.
Part of the issue is that we measure well-being as increased GDP: he who dies with the most toys wins. The idiocy of this practice is another conversation, but it’s worth noting that most of what people now call ‘wealth creation’ is simply the liquidation of one form of capital (forests or people’s welfare) for another (money.) This is just bad capitalism, or as activist Randy Hayes puts it, “cheater economics.” A good capitalist will steward and seek to enhance ALL forms of capital, thereby gaining the ability to create ever more genuine wealth, measured as the well-being of us all…
Until we transform the economy (a good idea, but also another conversation) we must attach as much value to nature and community as we legitimately can, and ensure that all forms of capital are properly accounted for, enhanced and stewarded…”
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