Book review: Capitalism at the Crossroads

Looking at global warming, water scarcity, increasing pollution and population, and declining natural resources, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that these problems are too large and intractable, no matter how much money and effort we throw at them. Stuart Hall's Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth and Humanity, with a foreword by recent Noble Peace Prize recipient Al Gore, provides reason for cautious optimism. Just as concentrated human creativity and large-scale changes in behavior helped address holes in the ozone layer, so Hall provides a framework for how multinational corporations, not governments, can lead the efforts to guild a "sustainable global network," each word being equally important.

Hall is well known for his efforts to help businesses develop products and policies to serve the needs of the 4 billion people in the world who live at "the base of the pyramid." Rather than think of the 80% of the global population who live in the developing world as "the poor," Hall provides numerous examples of how businesses can use the developing world as a lab to develop clean technologies using sustainable practices, then scale those results up to the middle of the pyramid.

Now that "going green" has entered mainstream corporate thinking. Hall offers us plans to move "beyond green." It is not enough for the developed world merely to moderate its carbon footprint. We must rethink how we use the world's natural rsources to meet our needs in ways that do not make it impossible for future generations to meet theirs. Investors will want to read this book to learn which companies are on the leading edge of developing profitable sustainable technologies to create long-term value for the triple bottom line: social, environmental and economic.