Paul Gerard Hawken was born on February 8, 1946. He is an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, economist, and activist.
Biography
Paul Hawken was born in San Mateo, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father worked at the University of California, Berkeley, in the field of library sciences. Hawken studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. His work includes starting businesses that protect the environment, writing about how business affects nature, and advising companies and governments on economic growth, industrial ecology, and environmental rules.
Hawken helped start and led Project Drawdown, a nonprofit organization that explains how global warming can be reduced.
He was involved in the civil rights movement. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Career
Paul Hawken has written articles, opinion pieces, research papers, and seven books, including The Next Economy (Ballantine, 1983), Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster, 1987), The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins, 1993), and Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007).
The Ecology of Commerce was named the top college textbook on business and the environment by professors at 67 business schools. Ray Anderson, a businessman and environmental leader at Interface, Inc., said reading The Ecology of Commerce changed his life. He described the experience as feeling like a "spear in the chest," which led him to travel across the United States to share ideas about reducing waste and carbon emissions.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, co-written with Amory Lovins, explains the concept of natural capital and the importance of accounting for ecosystem services. This book has been translated into 14 languages. Together with The Ecology of Commerce, these works are considered among the first to guide efforts toward a sustainable global economy.
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (2007) discusses a growing movement involving environmental, social justice, and indigenous rights groups. Hawken describes this movement as forming not through shared beliefs but by identifying what is and is not humane. He compares it to a collective immune system for humanity.
Growing a Business inspired a 17-part PBS television series, which Hawken hosted and produced. The series explored challenges in starting and running socially responsible companies and was seen in 115 countries by over 100 million people.
In 2013, Hawken co-founded Project Drawdown with Amanda Joy Ravenhill. He also co-authored and edited Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (2017), a project involving 200 researchers and advisors who identified major solutions to reduce global warming.
In 2021, Hawken published Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, which became a New York Times bestseller.
His books have been published in more than 50 countries and 30 languages.
Hawken started several businesses. In 1967, he took over a small retail store in Boston called Erewhon (named after a book by Samuel Butler) and turned it into Erewhon Trading Company, a natural-foods wholesaler that used sustainable farming methods. By the 1970s, the company had contracts for over 30,000 acres of organically grown food. In 1979, he co-founded Smith & Hawken, a garden supply company. In 2009, he started OneSun, an energy company focused on low-cost solar power using green chemistry and biomimicry.
From 1994 to 1998, Hawken led The Natural Step USA. From 1996 to 1998, he co-chaired The Natural Step International. The Natural Step was founded in 1989 by Swedish scientist Karl-Henrik Robèrt to help organizations understand sustainable development. It teaches environmental systems thinking in businesses, cities, governments, and schools through science-based dialogue.
In 1998, Hawken created the Natural Capital Institute in Sausalito, California. Its main project was wiser.org, an open-source database of activists and organizations working on environmental and social justice issues.
Hawken previously served as the executive director of Project Drawdown, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.
In 1965, Hawken worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s team in Selma, Alabama, preparing for the Selma to Montgomery marches. As press coordinator, he registered journalists, provided credentials, gave updates and interviews on radio, and acted as a marshal for the final march on March 21. That same year, he worked in New Orleans as a staff photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, focusing on voter registration efforts in Louisiana and Florida. He photographed the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi after three civil rights workers were killed. In Meridian, Mississippi, Hawken was attacked and taken by Ku Klux Klan members but escaped due to FBI surveillance and help.
As a speaker, Hawken has given hundreds of talks, including keynote addresses to major organizations, companies, and government agencies. His university commencement speeches have included:
– University of California, Berkeley commencement
– University of Portland 2009 commencement speech ("You Are Brilliant and the Earth Is Hiring")
– Urban Land Institute
– Yale University and Yale University commencement
Recognition
Hawken has received six special doctorates. In 2003, he was given the Green Cross Millennium Award for Individual Environmental Leadership by Mikhail Gorbachev.