Bill Clinton, praising this book, declared that it 'proves beyond argument that there are presently available technologies, and those just on the horizon, which will permit us to get richer by cleaning, not spoiling, the environment. This is a huge deal.' This will be achieved by assigning value to the earth's natural capital, correcting the tendency of business to waste it ever more prodigiously. The concept of 'costing the earth' is not new; the book's contribution is to elaborate a systems approach to business and the environment, in which markets become virtuous and frugally maximise outputs from the inputs now being squandered.