Chapter 2, The Death of Birth Summary and Analysis

When an area of land is cleared it is quickly taken over by weeds. They compete for sunlight and represent an inefficient use of resources, changing the environment. This is called negentropy. The immature ecosystems evolve and develop and become highly complex. They become mature and efficient and reach a state of equilibrium from which there is little change. Clearing the land for agricultural use involves changing this climax system into a system for production of crops.

Hawken describes the industrial economy as an immature ecosystem. The economy uses resources in a way that mimics the use of sunlight stored in plants and fossil fuels. It acts as a newly formed ecosystem and functions as a "linear industrial ecology of low information quality" (Chapter 2, p. 21). GNP increases without any index accounting for the...