Turning a new page at COP27 with Hunter Lovins

In place of the usual weekend reads here is a weekday one for you from inside COP27.

I caught up with the co-author of the seminal turn of the century book Natural Capitalism, Hunter Lovins, in Sharm el-Sheikh, who for decades has been showing companies that a business plan predicated on caring for nature will unearth profits for both themselves and the planet.

The best-selling author and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute is one of the world’s leading environmentalists and her groundbreaking and innovative ideas continue to shape the narrative at events like COP27 and beyond.

And in one of this year’s most talked about books on how to build a better future for people and the planet, ‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity‘ – my Monday must-read for you, it is Hunter’s ideas that really jump of the pages.

Compiled by the world’s leading scientists and economists, using the latest computer modelling technology, Earth for All shows that achieving ‘prosperity for all’ is very possible – and it pinpoints the actions that can deliver it within a generation.

It is a book that very much chimes with some of the stories of a #ACopHalfFull nature that we have been bringing you from COP27, and which you can continue to follow and add your voice to over on twitter.

And as well as kindly indulging me by signing a copy of Earth for All at an event she labels “the world’s climate party”, the managing partner of NOW Partners also provided a hint of something big she’s working on.

“One of the things I am doing here is talking with some very senior UN officials about how we build an alternative to the silliness,” Hunter said. “This is COP27, if you look at the graph of the rise in temperature, the rising emissions, plotted against the COP events, year by year, we’re not getting the job done. My real job here is to find out an alternative to COP.”

Whatever that alternative turns out to be it will doubtless be another seminal contribution from this icon of progress.

For more from the pages of Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, visit the book’s website.