8/7/2019 Review of the Blue Economy by Gunter Pauli

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Review of The Blue Economy by Gunter Pauli, Report to the Club of Rome, 2010, by

Hazel Henderson

Author Gunter Pauli has in his latest book, The Blue Economy, laid out the parametersfor the great transition of early-stage industrialism to a truly sustainable strategy for

human development. Pauli is a brilliant systems scientist as well as a successfulentrepreneur and a superb teacher and public intellectual. I have been fortunate to know

Pauli since we met at an early Club of Rome meeting when he was a student as deeplyconcerned as I was for the future of the human family on our precious blue planet.

As our paths have crossed over the years, I have applauded his outside-the-box

research and deep exploration of how lowly, overlooked species have solved their

survival problems with brilliant, subtle technological innovations. I have alwaysconsidered Nature as the preeminent designer and marveled at natural innovations over

billions of years, optimizing methods such as photosynthesis for capturing photons from

the sun to create food and resources. In my Paradigms in Progress (1991, 1995), I

included a chart identifying such technologies and how humans mimicked them whileclaiming to be their inventors.

Now in The Blue Economy, Pauli has assembled 100 such natural technologies and

innovations and explained lucidly the science behind their success. I was enthralled andlearned much about physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, insects, ecosystems and the

human body! This book is far and away the best manual for actually moving our early

industrial methods away from fossil fuels, nuclear power and many other mistakes of thepast. Old paradigms based on obsolete economic textbooks, miscasting such terms as:

efficiency, cost, investment, profit, etc., have lead our business schools to mis-

educate generations of MBAs and company executives. Pauli explains why Natures

paradigms are more sustainable and efficient because they integrate processes andcomponents into cascades of symbiotic productivity and true wealth (no longer

measured by devalued fiat currencies!). I congratulate my colleagues at the Club of Rome

for publishing this report.

Buy this book and read every page including the two valuable appendixes! Here you

will find as an investor, as I did, many new enterprises, research programs and companies

busy growing the ultimate information-rich, clean, harmonious societies of the Solar Age.This sustainability sector has been overlooked by security analysts due to their outdated

fossilized asset-allocation models (Updating Fossilized Asset-Allocation Classes:

Here Comes the Sustainability Sector!). I will be sending this book to my financial

advisor and other green asset managers, and to friends who use triple bottom line ESGasset valuations and also care to leave a better world to our descendents. We will be

looking at many of these companies as potential investments. Traditional Wall Streeters

still using Modern Portfolio Theory will be left at the starting gate!