'We don't have a climate crisis — we are the crisis': Environmentalist Paul Hawken on why honoring life is the best thing we can do against climate change

Environmentalist and author Paul Hawken speaks to Live Science about the worldview that has led to the mindless exploitation of the planet — and how we can shift perspectives for a better future.

By Sascha Pare

published 18 March 2025

in Interview

A poignant scene of a recently burned forest, captured at sunset. — Current discussions of climate change often vilify carbon, but the element is the very basis of life on Earth, says Paul Hawken.

(Image credit: Beata Whitehead/Getty Images)

The element carbon, in its oxidized form, is at the center of discussions about climate change. Carbon is often vilified and cast as the culprit for global warming, destruction and loss.

But what we tend to forget is that carbon is the main ingredient for life. And we are the only species on Earth that disrupts the natural flow of carbon, says environmentalist and author Paul Hawken.

Hawken's new book, "Carbon: The Book of Life" (Viking, 2025), shines a spotlight on the countless flows of carbon that power life, from individual cells to vast underground fungal networks and entire human societies. Through the lens of carbon, the author takes the reader on a journey through corporate retreats, the pharmaceutical sector, the food industry and the realms of plants, insects and fungi.

When people say we're going to "fix" the climate, or "tackle" or "combat" climate change, to me it's just so emblematic of this profound disconnection between self and other. We don't have a climate crisis; the climate cannot have a crisis. We are the crisis. That's what I want to explore. [I want] to go to a place that's not just insular and about self, but actually [gives rise to] a sense of being in the world that can create a sensibility that forms community. Because all of life as we know it exists in a community.

Hawken: What I'm trying to do in my own life, certainly, but also in communication, is to create the context in which people can see the world. Because what you see and receive really determines your mindset, your consciousness, your awareness and your sense of stress, anxiety and equanimity in the face of events that are troubling. Rather than going to the trouble and staying with that, I'm looking for a conversation that makes sense. That's where change needs to happen.

If you look at the proposals to really shift away from fossil fuels, what we're talking about is renewable energies to energize an economy that's skyrocketing in consumption, which is destruction. Renewable energy doesn't really take a step back to ask: "Energizing yes, but what?" And if we don't look at that, then we're just in a gerbil wheel. We may have the illusion that the faster we go, the faster we're getting somewhere, but actually we're not — it's almost the opposite.

Hawken: The book is about life and about carbon as an element. The flow of carbon is, in a sense, the flow of life. I began to look at the food system and what was being sold, what was being promoted. One thing led to another in terms of looking at health and self and food and agriculture as a system that is inseparable from the rest. That goes back to carbon, because if you look at a healthy agricultural system, it's full of carbon. That whole systemic understanding of food and health and farming and soil and agricultural practices and chemistry is also a way of looking at the other systems we have and that we take for granted.

Hawken: Earth is so big, we don't even understand our own cities. It leads to ways of thinking where [we don't consider where] our trash and sewage go. The spaceship is an imaginative exercise, where you imagine that a group of you is going on a spaceship for 10, 50, 100 years and you ask yourselves what is allowed on board and what is not. There's no spatial limit — it's more about the system, its inputs and outputs. It's just to bring it down to a scale where people can understand what happens on Earth without being a scientist.

Sascha is a U.K.-based staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.