By Julia Scott

Paul Hawken redefines corporate responsibility

Paul Hawken believes that businesses can do better in protecting the Earth. He should know—he's been there. This environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and respected author of such books as The Next Economy, Growing a Business, The Ecology of Commerce, and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (with Amory Lovins) continues to succeed in business—especially at those with a planet-friendly, innovative code of ethics.

He founded the first company in the country to sell organic foods, and is the co-founder of companies like Groxis and Smith & Hawken.

When he's not writing books (look for the soon-to-be-released We Interrupt This Empire about the world democracy movement), Hawken tours around the world giving talks to audiences of corporate executives, politicians, and youth. His message? Sustainability makes sense for business, and it's what humanity needs to survive. (The text of a speech he gave at the Bioneers Conference in October 2002 is here).

In an interview in December 2003, Paul told us what it was like to grow up in Berkeley in the 1960s, found a company at the age of 20, and celebrate the first Earth Day. He also offered some advice for young people fighting inequality all over the world.

What was life like for you as a kid? What were you interested in?

I grew up in Berkeley…I was doing civil rights stuff starting in '64. I was 16. Before that there was the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley. Reagan was governor [of California] and speech was controlled on campus. It's hard to imagine, but essentially free speech on campus was not free, you could not say what you wanted. Political speech was controlled. My father taught at Berkeley.

Do you attribute you interest in these issues to your background?

Absolutely. I was exposed to such extraordinary people. It was a very radical time. I joined the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, I was a photographer, I was a press coordinator for the March to Montgomery [An historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement]. I saw people getting beaten up, killed, shot at…you know, I saw hate, and saw how it was institutionalized in the South.

So what possessed you to become a photographer, to get on a bus or plane and go down to Montgomery?

The injustice. It was more stark then…I don't think there's less injustice now, it was just more blatant then, with respect to the war and with respect to civil rights. With respect to Earth Day 1970.

What about Earth Day 1970?

Well, it was the first one. It was huge, and there was just a real moment of collective awareness. But if you read the documents written then, they read like they are now. Nothing much has changed. There were the same concerns then—corporate corruption, political corruption—same fears about the future: biodiversity, climate change, pollution, water.

What did the first Earth Day represent for you?

I had already started, in 1966, the first really natural food store company in the United States. It focused entirely on organically grown foods. So it wasn't an awakening for me; I was just so happy that it was an awakening for the country. At the time it seemed like a lot of progress was going to be made with respect to the environment, and a lot of progress was made at that time—a lot of it got undone in the 80s and 90s.

How old were you in '66?

Twenty.

So you were a really young entrepreneur. What was the company called?

Erewhon. And when I left there six or seven years later, we had 50,000 acres that were organically grown in 37 states and stores on both coasts. We sold the first organically grown rice, grain nuts, seeds, produce.

Did entrepreneurship come to you naturally? Did you have any background in it?

I had none. I just felt like business is sometimes a way to get things done. And with food, it certainly was. You couldn't do it as an NGO [Non-Governmental Organization]. With farmers, you couldn't just hand them a pamphlet. You had to create a market. You had to connect the people who wanted to change their lives to the people who wanted to change the farms. And the only way to do that was commerce.

That was a real revelation for me, because I grew up in a town where commerce was considered a no-no because of corporations in the war during Vietnam. So I grew up in a very anti-business environment.

How did you parents take the news?

They didn't like it at all. They thought I should be in academics.

Can you try to pinpoint when your politics became your politics?

I don't know. When I was little I used to nurse injured birds back to life. It was always about taking care of things and places. The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley was intertwined with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, because basically the students wanted to use the university to organize. The university stopped them from organizing. There was a lot of police brutality too. I was 17 or 18, and it just had an amazing effect on my consciousness.

What would you recommend as advice for today's youth activists?

One thing is, never look for publicity as such. Look to be effective—effectiveness is key. Sometimes effectiveness is being on TV—when I was doing civil rights work in Louisiana and Mississippi, we turned the TV on to see if we were the lead story or the second story. That was the only thing between us and being killed, to make sure we were in the news to keep the Justice Department interested.

But the idea is that if you do protests, they should be publicized, and they're not much anymore. So the question is, what's effective? What are the leverage points? Because there's so many things that need attending to, you need to focus and you need to choose your tactics. Every so often, movements grow and catch on fire, and that's cool. But it should never be seen as a goal. Julia Butterfly Hill didn't go up in that redwood tree so she could come down to celebrity status. She did it because it was the right thing to do. If you're looking too far ahead, you could trip on things.

Issue-wise, is there anything you think is absolutely essential to address?

Political corruption. Because climate issues and biodiversity and war all go back to corruption.

Ironically, it's the hardest problem to address.

True. But it's the mother of issues. People don't get the right information, they get pandered to, they get demagogues for leaders. One of the requirements of a democracy is the free flow of factual information. I actually have a lot of trust in human beings—that if they're given the right information, they make appropriate decisions. I still believe that. If you don't believe that, then you believe that a small group of people should make the decisions. And then you're in trouble.