Paul Hawken: How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted June 26, 2007.

"It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. It is too late for heroes. We need an accelerated intertwining of the over 1 million nonprofits and 100 million people who daily work for the preservation and restoration of life on earth. ...The language of sustainability is about ideas that never end: growth without inequality, wealth without plunder, work without exploitation, a future without fear. A green movement fails unless there's a black-, brown-, and copper-colored movement, and that can only exist if the movement to change the world touches the needs and suffering of every single person on earth." --Worldchanging.org 12/26/06

Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From multimillion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise a movement that has no name, no leader, no location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up. Hawken's new book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, explores the diversity of the movement, its ideas, strategies and hidden history.

Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and author. He has been involved in the startup of several businesses, including Erewhon natural foods and Smith & Hawken, the garden and catalog retailer. His six books have been published in more than 50 countries and have sold more than 2 million copies. They include Growing a Business (also a PBS series), The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism and Blessed Unrest.

Terrence McNally: I've heard you tell a story about how you first awakened to the environment in your early years ...

Paul Hawken: I'm a fourth-generation Californian, so, like any family, there are stories, narratives and memories that are passed on. My childhood was one of growing up and seeing places transformed by industrialization. The best orchard lands in the world were in Santa Clara Valley. My great grandfather used to grow apricots in Cupertino where Apple Computer is today. I remember going down El Camino Real and seeing farm stands and cows and meadows, and people selling fresh eggs and things like that. Now it's all condos and used car lots. So I have in my history this visual and visceral sense of development gone mad and taking over lands that were exquisite. I've seen rivers go, I've seen streams go, I've seen forests go. I've seen the land disappear under development and population growth.

TMN: You did Growing a Business about entrepreneurism, then Ecology of Commerce challenges business to be a solution to environmental ills. In Natural Capitalism, you expressed hope in technology. Now, in Blessed Unrest, you turn to the people. Can you trace the evolution of where you've placed your faith or hope over the years?

PH: I grew up in Berkeley, California, in a culture where business was the last thing you would pursue. In my family the idea of going into the trades was really déclassé. You just didn't do it, you went into academia or something like that.

So for me to start a natural food company in 1967 was unusual, and at first I thought it should be a co-op or something other than a corporation. But finally I made it a corporation because that gave us the most freedom to do what we wanted to do. It's sort of emblematic of this whole culture that corporations have so much freedom.

Growing a Business wasn't about just growing your business, it was a metaphor for growing yourself. It wasn't about growing to be big in size, but about evolution and development. I wrote that you should do the business that is a complete and clear expression of what you want to be and do in the world, that money would necessarily follow. If you led with the urge for money, however, you would fail.

I attempted at my company to be a good citizen, to be green, to be socially just. I think we innovated and did a tremendous amount of good work, and we were well recognized and awarded for that.

See more stories tagged with: blessed unrest, social organizing, ngos

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org).

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