He is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and best-selling author. From the age of 20 Paul Hawken (California, February 8, 1946) he has dedicated his life to sustainability and to changing the relationship between business and the environment. His works analyse how to start and run ecological businesses, his most important work coauthored with Amory Lovins is Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, , which aims is to try and produce more with less. His book Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming was published in 2007. In it Hawken describes this movement which is composed of millions of organisations as the largest social movement in history. This movement fights all over the word for social justice and for the defence of environmental and local cultures. This kind of Movement is unique and is based solely on the power of the ideas. It has no leaders, nor chiefs. It is divided into groups, but it is one. Although his biography lists no formal education, he has been awarded six honorary doctorates including his most recent award from Portland University in May 2009, where he gave the speech from which this excerpt has been taken.

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