ClimateVoices Featuring Hunter Lovins

In this issue I’m pleased to be talking with Hunter Lovins , President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and co-creator of the “Natural Capitalism” concept. She served as Chief of Impact at Change Finance, PBC , which created the first truly fossil free ETF. Named Millennium TIME Magazine Hero of the Planet and awarded the 2008 Sustainability Pioneer Prize by the European financial community for her 30 years of work framing the sustainability movement, setting forth the business case for energy efficiency, renewable energy and resource productivity and climate protection. She also teaches at Fordham University .

A social entrepreneur, she mentors for the Unreasonable Institute, and consults with large corporations, small businesses, communities, and dozens of nations around the world. Her private and public sector clients have included Unilever , WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development , Walmart , Royal Dutch/ Shell , the IFC - International Finance Corporation , and the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Honduras, Jamaica, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, the US and many more. She is the author of 17 books, including The Way Out: Kickstarting Capitalism to Save Our Economic Ass, Creating a Lean and Green Business System, which won the Shingo Award, and A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life, which won a Nautilus Award.

In your decades of sustainability leadership you've worked with companies of all sizes. Where have you seen the most progress and how can employees and companies defend clean energy and climate progress in the face of today’s challenges?

Hi Bill, what a treat to be speaking with you. Last we talked, I think, was in Paris, as we were helping craft the last real accomplishment that the UN climate summits have achieved. Progress. These days it is sometimes hard to see. As Freya Williams showed, Unilever under Paul Polman grew its stock value 128% (With dividend reinvestment the return over the 10 years was 290%) and led the conversation about what it meant for a company to begin the hard work of becoming truly regenerative, enhancing the lives of its employees, its customers, and society as a whole. They committed to increase the wellbeing of a billion people. In the 7 years since predatory investors, interested only in short-term gain, forced Paul to leave, stock growth is only 7.8%, far underperforming the market. It’s now on its third CEO since Paul. The CEO of Unilever’s Ben & Jerry's ’s brand was just recently fired for “activism”. Emanual Faber committed Danone to becoming regenerative, and similarly was forced out. Now, even mentioning a commitment to “sustainability” is forbidden in the US government. We are a long way from implementing John Fullerton’s vision of Regenerative Capitalism

Gandhi once said of any new idea: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” We’re in the fighting stage. Right now things feel pretty grim, but the truth is, as Paul Polman showed, behaving responsibly to people and the planet really is better business. At NOW Partners, a group with whom I continue advising companies around the world, we call this The Integrated Bottom Line. 

Why did you decide to co-found an alternative global climate network called Conferences of People (COPx) and what do you hope it will accomplish?

I did not found COPx (conferences of people, independently organized). You might say, it found me. I was gonna quit, hang up my spurs. 

I asked myself: You add up everything I’ve ever done, is it enough? No. We’re losing. You know the science: We’re out of time. Last year was the hottest ever on human record. The climate disasters will come at us ever faster, each worse than before. 

Did I know what ‘enough’ was? Uh… no. Then why go down the road? Why burn carbon? I live on a beautiful ranch in Colorado. Stay home. Ride my horse, watch an eagle fly. 

I went on one last trip, and a very senior diplomat I’d fought (mistakenly) for several years before, pitched me on COPx: create a global citizens’ movement to solve the climate crisis by enabling people everywhere to implement the solutions in their own communities, in their own ways. 

Whoa. That would be enough. But then I thought, ‘it’s too big. I’ve no earthly idea how to do it. Nor do I know anyone who could.’ I shrugged and went on. He kept at it, and over seven hours on a bus crossing Italy (that’s a story for over some whisky) I thought, damn, he can do it. It isn’t about him. He asked if I would join him. I thought about how I’d told my husband that I’d retire. Then I looked at the diplomat and said, “I will ride for your brand. You’ve no earthly idea what I just said, but you’ll figure it out.” 

We’d reckoned to launch with big main stage events: celebrities, musicians, big media. All celebrating what ordinary people are doing in their communities to make the difference, the things we all can do. Doing a day(s) of synchronized global events would cost a lot of money, so I set out to raise it, and build the movement we’ve all been waiting for. We were promised millions, but the oligarch bought a boat. Then something like $10.5 billion was ratholed into the recent U.S. election. I failed to raise the big bucks. After the election, the diplomat with whom I’ve been coordinating closely said: “Just launch. We’ve talked about this long enough.” 

So we did. It’s called going on guts. Our team is all volunteers. My non-profit, Natural Capitalism Solutions gave COPx a home. Walter Link and Aya Okawa at NOW Partners Foundation gifted us our website: www.copx.global. A friend, Juan Echanove Echanove gave us a beautiful graphic novel that explains COPx far better than I can. On the first day of spring, an impact investor, Douglas Heske , gifted us a platform: www.newdayinform.com on which our community and many other change agents can convene and create a global conversation. Join us. Go to the website and register to become a COPx organizer. Jump onto Newday Inform; create your own login, then search for COPx Community, and join the conversation. 

If you are working with a climate group you think is effective, please keep doing that. Invite them to partner with us. We have no intention of replacing any group, but rather we are engaging the billions of people around the world who now feel alone, helping them find their voice, and amplifying all efforts.

Why do you think we need to build climate action from the bottom-up and how can employees take action right away to contribute to this grassroots movement?

Now, we are all about to trek off to the Amazon for COP30 – the UN’s annual exercise in frustration: the Conference of Parties (COP). For 30 years the nations of the world have gathered every fall to “negotiate” where to place the commas and brackets. And in that time, emissions have doubled. My co-collaborator diplomat’s key recognition is that the COPs can never solve the climate crisis. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) mandates that any agreement must be unanimous. Any one nation can veto it. Saudi Arabia makes a billion dollars a day, every day they delay action on climate solutions. You really think that what we need will come from a COP?

We know how to solve the crisis. Dr. Mark Jacobson has shown that renewable energy can meet all of our energy needs, cheaper and better than burning fossil fuels. That will end the emissions. We then use regenerative agriculture to pull the excess carbon from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil where it belongs. We can roll climate change backwards at a profit.

What can employees do? There is a great effort out of the UK called Hurd : a free app empowers employees to make a difference on climate at work, with practical tips through engaging learning, and support from our global community. There’s more power in your job than you think – download Hurd and start using it to act on climate.

All it takes is you and me. Look around your community, your office, your home and ask, what difference can I make? Look at yourself in the mirror every day and ask, “What is my DOT: Do One Thing?“ It may be a small action, but it is not nothing. These small acts will aggregate globally into the political will needed to shift policy. Globally representative studies show that well north of 80% of people want aggressive climate action. About the same number believe that the international system has failed, and will never work. And way south of 40% believe anyone else feels the same way. Which is to say, we all feel profoundly alone. Few people will act if they think they are the only one. But you are not alone. COPx is making visible the greatest common ground on earth. We do care. We do want a finer future. Gandalf said, “Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

In Big Tech, they call me a “shit stirrer” – and I love that nickname. What’s your moniker? 

I’ve twice been fired for being “disruptive,” once from an outfit whose motto was “Be Disruptive,” once with a dissenter saying “Damn straight she’s disruptive: she’s the only one ever got anything done.” Once, I asked a co-collaborator, a very senior diplomat, “Why me? You could have your choice of partners from around the world… I fought you.” He answered: “You fought hard, but you fought fair.” So the nickname I’m most proud of is when that ambassador calls me a “cowgirl”.

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