Let’s take a moment to talk about Earth. Yes, Earth...the planet we live on. It gives us air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, trees to pee against…all good stuff. And if we had to come up with a name to give all that good stuff, all the natural resources that make it possible for us to not only survive, but invent, create, grow, and thrive...we’d probably call it “natural capital.” In fact, we’d definitely call it “natural capital,” because that’s what everyone else calls it. Like, it’s pretty much a universally accepted term.
Anyway, most of the time, when people refer to “natural capital,” they’re talking about stuff like land and air and ecosystems. But the term can also be used to describe the natural resources that an organization owns, like the forest owned by the timber company or the natural gas reserves owned by the drilling company.
Natural capital works like normal capital: we can use it to make goods and services, but if we use too much of it too fast, we’ll end up broke and resourceless. And that is pretty much universally accepted as...bad.
