APPLETON, WIS. — Best-selling author, environmentalist, ecological entrepreneur and corporate reformer Paul Hawken discusses the diversity, innovative strategies and extensive history of the largest environmental and social justice movement on earth in a Lawrence University convocation.
Hawken presents “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming” Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The address is based on his 2007 book of the same name.
A question-and-answer session with Hawken will be held at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.
Since starting his own company at the age of 20, a natural foods wholesale business in Boston, Hawken has devoted his life to writing, lecturing and teaching about the impact of commerce on the environment.
“Blessed Unrest” is the result of 10 years of research he conducted on national and international organizations, from billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.com causes, which collectively comprise the largest movement on earth. In the book, Hawken chronicles the growth of a movement that has no name, leader or location and is resisting corporatization and working on issues of sustainability.
Prior to “Blessed Unrest,” Hawken had written six other books, among them “The Ecology of Commerce” in 1993, “Growing a Business,” which became the basis of a 17-part PBS television series and 1999’s “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,” which President Clinton declared one of the five most important books in the world today.
In addition to his writing, Hawken has founded several ecological businesses, including the popular gardening and horticultural retail and catalogue business Smith & Hawken as well as the California-based Natural Capital Institute, a nonprofit organization committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture.
He serves frequently as a consultant to governments and corporations on issues of economic development, industrial ecology and environmental policy.
