Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices, and a pioneering architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. Paul is Founder of Project Drawdown, a non-profit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed.

Paul has appeared in numerous media including the Today Show, Larry King, and Talk of the Nation and has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles including the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, His writings have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Resurgence, Boston Globe, and others.

Paul has written eight books including five national bestsellers: The Next Economy (1983), Growing a Business (1987), and The Ecology of Commerce (1993) Blessed Unrest (2007), and Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (1999) co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been read and referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the five most important books in the world during his tenure as President. His current writing Regeneration: ending the climate crisis in one generation will be released this September.

Paul has founded several companies, starting in the 1960s with Erewhon, one of the first natural food companies in the U.S. that relied solely on sustainable agricultural methods. He went on in 1979 to co-found Smith & Hawken, the retail and catalog garden company. In 2009 Paul founded OneSun, an energy company focused on ultra low-cost solar based on green chemistry and biomimicry that is now known as Energy Everywhere.

Paul has received six honorary doctorates. In 2019, the National Council for Science and the Environment granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award on Science, Service, and Leadership.

“This is a watershed moment in history where all of humanity has come together, whether we realize it or not. The heating planet is our commons. It holds us all. To address and reverse warming requires connection and reciprocity. It calls for moving out of our comfort zones to find a depth of courage we may have never known. It doesn’t mean being right in a way that makes others wrong; it means listening intently and respectfully, stitching together the broken strands that separate us from life and each other. It doesn’t mean hope or despair; it calls for action that is courageous and fearless. We have created an astonishing moment of truth. The climate crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem. The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect, and compassion—for ourselves, all people, all life. This is regeneration.”

—Excerpted from Regeneration