However, numbers are the biggest problem with this book, starting with the first sentence: “There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero.” Fifty-one billion was the number of tonnes of CO2 from human activity added to the atmosphere in 2019; zero emissions are what Gates says we have to aim for to avoid the worst effects of climate change. But Gates says we still need concrete, fertilizer and natural-gas power plants (others think there are solutions for all three of these, but that’s another story), so he calls for “near net-zero,” where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere with carbon-capture devices, by reducing carbon in production processes, or through some form of offsetting.

None of these exist at scale at this time, but hey, don’t worry, Bill is on it: “I’m also a technophile. Show me a problem, and I’ll look for technology to fix it.” He has put a bit of his money where his mouth is, investing more than a billion dollars in everything from low-carbon cement and steel to faux meat, and several-hundred-million dollars in next-generation nukes.

The second problematic pair of numbers in Gates’s book are 2030 and 2050. Both are targets set in the Paris Agreement; to keep the rise in global average temperature below 1.5°C at the end of the century, we have to reduce emissions by about 50% by 2030 and to about zero by 2050. Gates does not believe that 2030 is realistic and thinks aiming for it might even be counterproductive. “Why? Because the things we’d do to get small reductions by 2030 are radically different from the things we’d do to get to zero by 2050. They’re really two different pathways, with different measures of success, and we have to choose between them.”

The 2030 pathway would mean starting now with the technology we have, which might take us 80% of the way. But Gates says we should be thinking big and using the time to plan for “the big technological changes that would ensure long-term success.” There is some logic to his worry about “lock-in” with investments in problematic “bridge fuels” like natural gas, when his strategy is to go zero-carbon with renewables and nuclear power, electrifying everything, and then using carbon capture to pick the remaining CO2 out of the air and then store it somehow.

The problem with these strategies is time, given another big number: 570 billion tonnes. That’s the estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change back in 2018 of the total quantity of CO2 that can be added to the atmosphere if we are going to have a good chance of staying under 1.5° warming. Divide that by Bill Gates’s 51 billion tonnes and we run out of headroom before 2030, and it’s why every single molecule of CO2 emitted now matters; if we keep pushing off making changes, then his new technology is going to have to do an awful lot of CO2 sucking.

The second, bigger problem with a 2050 target is what futurist Alex Steffen calls “predatory delay.” It lets Toronto Mayor John Tory pour a billion dollars of concrete into the Gardiner Expressway or Ontario Premier Doug Ford push a highway through the greenbelt because “don’t worry, we will have electric cars.” It lets Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau keep boiling rocks in Alberta because “don’t worry, we will have a hydrogen economy.” It lets Gates keep flying his private jet because he will be able to buy sustainable fuel. It lets us wait for some deus ex machina to drop out of the sky and save us, instead of actually giving anything up or making changes in our lives or economies now.

Notwithstanding these doubts, there is much to admire about Bill Gates. In an era of what Michael Mann calls “doom and gloomism,” he is positive, upbeat and optimistic. He really does believe that we can invent our way out of this and go from 51 billion to zero, instead of starting tomorrow with the renewable and storage technology that we have now. The problem is that we have run out of time, and the numbers don’t add up.

Lloyd Alter is design editor for Treehugger.com and author of the upcoming book Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle.

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As for the title, Winston explains it this way: “If you believe that these pressures are real, then what has until now been called green business, or sustainability, cannot be a side department or a niche conversation in commerce.” Indeed, he continues, “we must pivot – sometimes painfully, always purposefully, so that solving the world’s biggest challenges profitably becomes the core pursuit of business.”

But first, Winston has to convince us about the seriousness of the challenges we face, and it’s a tough sell. He presents the hard data on climate change, but admits that it is easy for some to write off because the warming numbers don’t sound particularly scary; having shivered through this Canadian summer, they sound actually quite pleasant. He quotes one scientist: “You almost couldn’t design a problem that is a worse fit with our underlying psychology.” It’s so true. Unfortunately, for a short book a lot of space is given to a subject that most readers already know, yet it is not likely to change the minds of skeptics.

The mega-challenge of resource scarcity, however, is more immediate and obviously a business problem as commodity prices go through the roof and water becomes scarce. Food prices also increase as corn, soy and palm oil are diverted to biofuels; water supplies are challenged as they’re diverted to lawns and fracking. The business case for a big pivot here is more compelling.

The final mega-challenge is the challenge of transparency. Winston claims that every company that wants to remain competitive needs to answer tough questions about its supply chain and its environmental and social performance, “especially the ones coming from business customers.” Everybody is watching and there is nowhere to hide, so companies have to clean up their act. Or, as author and new-economy thinker Don Tapscott puts it, “If we’re all going to get naked, we better get buff.”

Winston is least convincing here. Transparency is a challenge, yes, but doesn’t seem to have a “mega” quality. There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of buffing up of corporate bodies going on – at least not across the board. Lobbying still continues by some industries, such as “Big Ag” and the chemical industry, to block laws aimed at increasing transparency. In Germany, some politicians are even considering switching from computers to typewriters to stop prying eyes.

Most of Winston’s 10 “radically practical strategies” will be familiar to regular readers of Corporate Knights as part of the ideal of Clean Capitalism; titles like “Fight short-termism” and “Set big science-based goals” will ring a bell. However, the final strategy is more than a big pivot, it’s a whole new spin: “Build a resilient, anti-fragile company.”

Diversity makes organizations stronger. Variety makes crops more pest- and weather-resistant. A company, Winston writes, “with just one product line, technology or service that brings in the vast majority of its profits is at great risk.” He describes how a flood in Thailand nearly closed Honda when the only factories producing a few critical parts lost production. “A bit of redundancy in the system might be worth the expense if it avoids serious and expensive disruptions.” Indeed, resilient companies mimic nature, which gives us backup kidneys and eyeballs. Nature doesn’t put all its eggs in one fragile basket.

Winston is a techno-optimist who believes that if these strategies are followed we can build a resilient, green and profitable world. He thinks that the coal industry will be gone and that fossil fuel companies will either get into renewables or become much smaller organizations. It’s a stretch when Canada is building pipelines and the U.S. is shipping coal to China that’s too dirty to be used in America; where Scotland is basing independence on new North Sea oil finds. But perhaps that’s just my short-termist thinking.

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“A Purpose Economy is based on empowering people to have rich and fulfilling careers by creating meaningful value for themselves and others; it creates purpose for its employees and customers – through serving those in need, enabling self-expression, and building community.”

This isn’t just the “doing well by doing good” hippieish philosophy that we saw in Ben & Jerry’s or The Body Shop, two examples Hurst mentions; technology changes everything. So where farmers’ markets and crafts fairs have been around forever, now there are Etsys for crafts and networks like Ontario’s Local Food Plus to bring creators and careful consumers together. Hurst’s own Taproot foundation brings people who need help together with experts offering pro bono services. Hurst writes:

“Humans are social animals, and while community itself may not generate purpose, it is an amplifier. It creates a context and the relationships that make purpose so much richer. Purpose is most powerful when it is shared. It is the ingredient that makes farmers’ markets and local economies so much more compelling. It is the power behind so much going on in social media – from Facebook to Pinterest.”

The Purpose Economy is particularly relevant to the millennial generation that will be living in it. Having been born into a world where most of their basic needs have been taken for granted, and watching their parents “working harder and harder, spending less quality time at home with the family, in order to afford a big house, three cars, and all the accoutrements of success,” and probably unable to ever expect to have the same themselves, they want something different. They are spending their money on experiences and technology, “particularly technology that creates social experiences. It’s about interaction instead of consumption.”

The new technology has created a whole new economy of sharing, everything from office space (co-working spaces like the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto and New York) to fundraising (Kickstarter now contributes more funding for the arts than The National Endowment for the Arts) to home- and room-sharing groups (like Airbnb). Hurst says it’s not just about the money:

“The popularity of sharing is not only a matter of saving money; it also comes from the desire for community, bonding people through the trust and reciprocity that are at its core, and allowing people to express their repudiation of materialism and the culture of accumulation.”

Hurst also notes the growth of the B Corp – hybrid companies that combine profitmaking with a social mission. They have been called the “Rock stars of the new economy” and include Patagonia, Seventh Generation and your publisher, Corporate Knights. There are over 850 of them now around the world, and they are where the millennials want to work, he says. It’s where everybody would want to work.

And of course, there is the rise of Freelance Nation, the home of so many of us these days. Hurst suggests that “so many have chosen the freelance path because they are put off by the strictures of corporate life and they want to have the latitude to select their clients, which they tend to do very carefully because they want to work with people they like and feel in sync with.”

Or not. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. More people, it’s safe to argue, are working freelance because they need money and there aren’t any jobs. As the parent of two university-educated millennials who are pumping espresso and mongering cheese and living in crowded apartments, I don’t see a lot of signs of a “purpose economy” in their lives. One has to wonder if Hurst is not in a Park Slope bubble; there is a workplace revolution going on right now, and it is technology driven, but it is destroying jobs in traditional sectors more quickly than it is creating them in new ones.

The Purpose Economy is a wonderful, inspiring book, particularly if you are rich and have time to spare to help others or are young with The Bank of Mom behind you. For them, “purpose is the currency of the new economy.” All others pay cash.

Purpose is the bonus we’d all like to earn, and which, it goes without saying, we should all aim for. If technology helps us achieve that, then all the better.

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“Human beings don’t have a pollution problem, they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldn’t even need to think in terms of waste, or contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse and pleasure.”

Now, with their new work The Upcycle, McDonough and Braungart attempt to apply cradle-to-cradle principles to larger societal issues. “The goal of the upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed,” they write.

There is a lot to digest in this book. You can do it literally; it’s all carefully printed on non-toxic paper with vegetable inks. Technically, one could shred it, add milk and eat it for breakfast as a source of dietary fibre. That is a point of cradle-to-cradle design – everything is a nutrient, either biological or technically, either compostable or reusable.

It’s an approach that isn’t just good for the planet; it’s also good for business. Furniture manufacturer Herman Miller found that when it designed its Aeron chair according to such principles, the chair not only could be taken apart more easily at the end of its life, but it went together more quickly when it was made in the first place. When toxic chemicals were removed from the production processes, the need for safety measures and ventilation decreased, reducing costs. It’s an approach that makes money for Herman Miller, and that’s the point.

As the authors write, “The most effective transformational foundation of Cradle to Cradle is, to the surprise of some, not environmental. Nor is it ethical. If Cradle to Cradle fails as a business concept and innovation engine, then it fails, period. It succeeds when it celebrates economic growth, which in turn grows ecological and social revenue.”

Perhaps the most important business concept in The Upcycle is that waste is a wasted opportunity. It is what McDonough calls a “materials-in-the-wrong-place problem.” A simple example is human waste: with conventional technology, it is a huge cost and liability, a waste of money as well as materials. Yet if it was treated as a nutrient management system, valuable phosphorus could be recovered. Solids could be turned into compost or biogas. It becomes an asset providing income. And there are some innovative cleantech companies out there doing just that.

In an upcycle world, there is no such thing as garbage. Your waste bin is a nutrient rest stop. However, for these nutrients to be useful and economically viable, they need to be designed with disassembly in mind. Instead, many products are what McDonough calls “monstrous hybrids,” designed almost as if to make life purposefully difficult.

A good example is the plastic spout on the top of a cardboard milk or juice container. We used to know how to open and close a carton of milk simply by unfolding the flaps. Adding the plastic spout is an inconsequential convenience, but it turns it into a monstrous hybrid. Removing the plastic from the cardboard requires extra effort – that is, more energy.

Not to say the cradle-to-cradle philosophy is not without controversy. The certification system has been called opaque and proprietary. It rejects most of what is called recycling as “downcycling,” meaning a material is turned into a lower grade material and loses value each step of the way.

The Upcycle book sometimes seems like Bill McDonough himself: occasionally repetitive and self-absorbed, sometimes treating other people’s ideas as his own, but in an overly simplistic way. The authors often sound more like a Tony Robbins-style motivational speaker than an architect and a chemist.

However, sometimes we all need a little religion. McDonough and Braungart see sustainability as a design problem, something that can be solved. It is a positive and uplifting view of a cleaner and healthier world without waste, made of renewable materials, powered by clean energy, based on plausible economics.

That’s a motivating thought. And if you don’t like the book, you can always eat it.

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Nikiforuk builds on Fuller’s ideas in his book The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude. It is a fascinating book with, I think, a dreadful title. One’s first thought is that, yes, energy slaves have taken the place of human slaves. But is this a bad thing? To paraphrase from the 1970s science fiction movie Soylent Green, “Oil isn’t people.” You can’t compare the two. Or can you?

In fact, Nikiforuk makes a solid case that our dependence on oil is the physical, if not quite the moral equivalent of slavery. Our dependence on oil has defined the way we live and made us who we are.

He argues that fossil fuels are also the root of all evil, including the population explosion. “If coal was the Spanish fly of the nineteenth century, then oil surely served as the Viagra of the twentieth.” He doesn’t think much of the way we have turned out, either. Take the following excerpt:

“The people on fossil fuels, perhaps the most narcissistic and bankrupt cohort in the history of the species, shop incessantly and genuflect to the market or the state, the provider of goods and services. They have fewer children. They prize small families or no families and primarily live in cities. They eat lots of animal protein, tend to be obese, and live as long as J.D. Rockefeller. They use condoms and support abortion. They accept women in the workforce, eschew marriage, hail secularism, promote individualism… Highly mobile, they prize no place in general. Their elderly are numerous but neither valued nor respected. The overwhelming presence of mechanical slaves in everyday life has created the temporary illusion that children are not needed to care for the old.”

This is an extremely telling and troubling paragraph, in which Nikiforuk dismisses much of western civilization and most of his readership. It would appear that for Nikiforuk, most of the wonders of the 20th century, from longer lives to equal rights for women, are problematic as they are built on the backs of our energy slaves. He never acknowledges the benefits that replacing human labour with energy slaves has brought society, only the excesses.

Now, as the cheap and easy sources of fossil fuels run out and our energy slaves become more expensive to feed, what are the alternatives? Nikiforuk doesn’t think renewables can generate enough, and, like writer David Owen, thinks energy efficiency just leads to more consumption.

Nikiforuk concludes that we have to reduce our energy consumption by changing our lifestyles in “a radical decentralization and relocalizing of energy spending combined with a systematic reduction of the number of inanimate slaves in our households and places of work.” It all comes down to the argument we are seeing played out in the streets of our cities every day now. In this regard, Nikiforuk quotes Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich:

“Each community must choose between the bicycle and the car, between a ‘postindustrial labor-intensive, low-energy and high-equity economy’ and the ‘escalation of capital-intensive institutional growth’ that would lead to a ‘hyperindustrial Armageddon.’”

Nikiforuk concludes that there is a worldwide “haphazard and improbable emancipation movement” emerging where people are “exchanging quantity for quality, and relearning the practical arts… Above all, they are relearning what it means to live within their means, with grace.”

It is a weak ending; the world will not be saved by hipsters on bikes. But the fact that Nikiforuk cannot come up with a plausible solution doesn’t diminish his basic thesis: We are too dependent on our energy slaves, and are becoming incapable of surviving without an army of them for each of us. It’s not healthy for us or the planet, it’s not moral and it’s not going to last.

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