Product Description

* "Too many environmentalists see capitalism as the enemy. Porritt grapples with its reality--a system capable of delivering sustainability and enhancing wellbeing, but only if we think carefully about what form of capitalism we want. This book stimulates that thinking."
Adair Turner
* "Here’s a compelling book that should sound the trumpet for a whole new generation of engaged and optimistic young people, establishing once and for all that we still have choices--we don’t have to sleepwalk our way into the future."
David Puttnam

* Tackles the most pressing problem of our time--how capitalism, and business, can provide a future of wealth, equity, and ecological integrity

* Destined to be one of the most important business, economics, and politics books of the year

* Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is a leading influence on business and industry, the UK government's premier adviser on sustainable development, and a well-known author, broadcaster, and visionary

As our great economic machine grinds relentlessly forward into a future of declining fossil fuel supplies, climate change, and ecosystem failure, humanity, by necessity, is beginning to question the very structure of the economy that has provided so much wealth and inequity across the world. In this fresh, politically charged analysis, Jonathon Porritt weighs in on the most pressing question of the 21st century – can capitalism, as the only real economic game in town, be retooled to deliver a sustainable future? Porritt argues that indeed it can and it must as he lays out the framework for a new "sustainable capitalism" that cuts across the political divide and promises a prosperous future of wealth, equity, and ecosystem integrity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #796009 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

About the Author
Jonathon Porritt CBE, is Co-Founder and Program Director of Forum for the Future. A leading adviser to business and industry, he was appointed by Tony Blair as Chairman of the new UK Sustainable Development Commission. He is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales's Business and Environment Program as well as a Board Member of the South West Regional Development Agency in the UK.

Customer Reviews

A bold new vision for capitalism
Activist Jonathon Porritt offers the startling proposal that capitalism may provide the best solution to poverty and global environmental degradation, though his solution requires reshaping capitalism. Porritt is aware that conventional environmental activists, greens and political academics favor socialism more than capitalism. However, he takes them to task for ignoring the power and potential of such capitalist mechanisms as markets and property rights and for their naïveté in expecting voters or political leaders to embrace their dismal vision of environmental responsibility as asceticism. We find his book more suggestive than programmatic. It meanders like a river and is sometimes directionless. The author makes his passions apparent, including anti-Americanism and scathing criticism of certain forms of Christianity. Though Porritt does not offer a detailed description of his vision or the practical steps needed to realize it, he does suggest a path toward a utopian ideal; for that hope, he deserves appropriate attention.

How business and government can build a better world
Jonathan Porritt's CAPITALISM AS IF THE WORLD MATTERS provides college-level readers with a fine survey of how capitalism at its foundations may be a part of the environmental problem as a whole. Many time commercial activities themselves lend to eroding environments: it's up to both business and government to work hand in hand to build a form of capitalism and free market solutions which lend towards sustainability rather than away from it - and to consider the chapters in CAPITALISM AS IF THE WORLD MATTERS, which offers commentary and guideposts for building different capital resources.