Contents -- Editor's Foreword -- Preface: how environmental protection mutated into an eco-strategy -- Acknowledgments -- 1 The Earth In Motion -- How we manage natural resources -- Dematerialization of the economy -- Moving resources -- Changing the way we manage the economy -- The necessity of dematerialization -- The ecological rucksack and an ecological metric -- Energy in the ecological rucksack -- How we manage resources -- From old to new environmental policy -- 2 The True Price Of Things -- Focus on function -- Two new concepts -- Ecological rucksacks -- The ecological price, or the true price of things -- Material input factors - MIF -- Five different rucksacks -- Factor 10 -- In a nutshell -- 3 The Ecological Metric -- Costs per service -- The ecological price of utility -- MIPS is evidently the ecological equivalent of COPS -- The service unit S -- An example: what is dematerialized steel? -- Resource productivity: more utility for less environment -- Resource productivity of production -- Resource productivity of services -- Ecological prices and labels -- Ecological prices -- Do prices tell the ecological truth? -- 4 The Economy's Metabolism -- An Excursus: The Tower Of Babel -- Inseparable: economic activity and the ecosphere -- Material flow accounts -- The resource strategy -- Material flows in Germany -- Food metabolism in Germany -- Material flows in the European Union -- The global economy's material flows -- The population problem and resource consumption -- Boomerang effects -- Sustainable world trade? -- 5 Consequences For The Earth -- The complexity of the economy and the ecosphere -- The devastation caused by hurricanes -- Early warnings -- The Kyoto Protocol - the path to the future? -- Sustainable solutions? -- 6 Services And Their Utility -- Practical services -- Luxury and resources -- Services performed by machines.

Nature's services -- The utility of life -- Changing values? -- Focusing on utility helps to create a future with a future -- Seeking ecological utility -- Choosing the best -- Making difficult choices -- The new Kondratiev wave -- Who are the movers and shakers? -- Making MIPS smaller: dematerializing existing products -- Designing the invisible: innovations for tomorrow -- Multifunctional equipment -- Designing sustainable utility -- 7 The Earth In Our Hands -- The productivity of labor and resources -- Unemployment with no prospects? -- Misdirected financial burdens? -- Energy and resource efficiency -- Unintelligent taxation -- Full-cost pricing -- The reality of wasting resources -- Innovation on the wrong track? -- The Aachen scenario -- We still lack information -- Carnoules Potentials -- Investing in tomorrow -- Europe's historic opportunity -- Epilogue -- Glossary -- Tables -- References.