Regenerative Economics - by John Fullerton (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Transform how you see the economy--and what's possible. Discover a science-based, hopeful path beyond crisis thinking with a regenerative model that works like a living system, helping leaders, communities, and citizens navigate climate chaos, inequality, and ecological breakdown with clarity and purpose.

This groundbreaking book reveals why today's economic model is failing--and how a regenerative approach can unlock resilience, justice, and health for people and the planet. Instead of reacting to crisis after crisis, a regenerative economy creates the conditions for systems to thrive, adapt, and evolve.

This bold rethinking of economics for a world in crisis:

• Identifies the hidden fatal flaw driving today's polycrisis
  
• Explains regenerative design principles rooted in living systems
  
• Offers actionable steps and transformative policies for real change
  
• Moves beyond sustainability, circularity, and degrowth toward whole-system health
  
• Illuminates a path forward that aligns economic activity with ecological limits.

Why this book matters now
As climate disruption, biodiversity loss, and inequality accelerate, this work provides a hopeful, rigorous framework for redesigning our economic future--one grounded in science, values, and the deep wisdom of natural systems.

About the Author
John Fullerton is an unconventional economist, impact investor, and founder of the Capital Institute. After a 20-year career as a Managing Director at "the old JPMorgan," he left Wall Street in search of deeper answers. His pioneering work, Regenerative Capitalism, launched a global movement, and his online course, Introduction to Regenerative Economics, has reached audiences worldwide. A member of the Club of Rome and featured in the award-winning documentary Going Circular, Fullerton is widely regarded as the leading voice on regenerative economic thinking.

Redefine what the economy can be--and help build a future where both people and the planet can thrive.

Review Quotes

Please read this important book; it will change your life and by extension change our system for the benefit of all Life that will come after us.
--Colin le Duc, founding partner of Generation Investment Management

In a profound breakthrough, Regenerative Economics is the way-shower we need to urge our collective agency from separation to wholeness, domination to partnership, and conflict toward our evolutionary potential for planetary peace.
--Dr. Jude Currivan, cosmologist, author, and co-founder of WholeWorld-View

This book should be on the desk of every politician, CEO, CFO, and investor, worldwide.
--John Elkington, sustainability pioneer and author of 21 books, including Tickling Sharks

These are crucial reflections for an overheating and chaotic world.
--Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun

Exactly as predicted by Donella Meadows and colleagues a half century ago in the Club of Rome's seminal report, Limits to Growth, humanity has not only hit planetary limits, but human progress is moving backwards. The good news is that there are no limits to learning. With Regenerative Economics, Fullerton shows us a fresh pathway forward. The time has come to honor the wisdom of Limits to Growth by applying what we know and building an alternative future that makes us proud! This book and its thinking contributes to that edifice.
--Sandrine Dixson-Declève, global ambassador for the Club of Rome and co-author of Earth for All

Regenerative: everyone's using the word these days. You owe it to yourself to enjoy this deep dive from the man who made the term popular.
--Hunter Lovins, president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, author of 17 books including Natural Capitalism, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award

This thought-provoking book, he urges us to take a more holistic approach to understanding the economy, ourselves, and the environment, and to base that understanding on the regenerative process common to all life. More than that, he points the way.
--Peter A. Victor, professor emeritus at York University and author of Escape from Overshoot and Herman Daly's Economics for a Full World

This is one of the most important books on economics in our times. Fullerton understands clearly that our human economy is a subset of nature's economy. But he goes further. In aligning our economic systems with nature's generative processes, he points us toward creating a flourishing Earth community. This perspective echoes the wisdom found in many ancient teachings, offering a pathway to transcend our separation and join together as an interdependent planetary species. Regenerative Economics is an indispensable beacon shining the way to our shared planetary future.
--Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder and co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and co-author of Journey of the Universe

John Fullerton's new book, Regenerative Economics, is a light for dark times, offering a new lens for us to reconsider livelihood and how we live in community with ourselves and the natural world. Those who have been waiting for a rigorous yet soulful definition of regeneration and regenerative principles will find Fullerton's approach refreshing, coherent, and comprehensive.
--Vincent Stanley, Director of Philosophy, Patagonia

We need to rethink everything-our economics, finance, culture, politics- if we are to meet the great challenges of our times. Let's begin with this powerful and timely book.
--Rebecca Henderson, John & Natty University Professor, Harvard University

The beacon of John Fullerton and his book Regenerative Economics is a new North Star. It's just what the doctor ordered in these turbulent times.
--Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking

Fullerton's book is radical, as in getting to the root of the matter. It offers the kind of imaginative thinking our leaders urgently need to transcend our differences and align around the vital challenge of our time: economic system transformation. Regenerative Economics offers an inspirational and credible pathway forward; it stirs our souls with well-founded hope.
--Sam Pitroda, innovator, entrepreneur, author of Redesign the World, artist, and former advisor to two prime ministers of India

The world's polycrisis is tearing apart the social and ecological systems vital to our well-being. How can we reduce these terrible risks? John Fullerton guides us to an essential answer. We must shift from the reductionist thinking, institutions, and practices driving the polycrisis and instead reimagine--and then reconfigure--our economies as complex living systems. Lucid, impassioned, and entertaining, Regenerative Economics offers a master plan to arrest our collective slide towards disaster.
--Thomas Homer-Dixon, PhD, executive director, Cascade Institute and author of Commanding Hope

For 4 billion years, evolving life has tinkered ever-novel ways of making our livings with one another. Regenerative Economics powerfully reminds us that our tasks are to sustain functional integration of the global economy as we flow into the Adjacent Possible we create. GDP, a mismeasure of Man, does not measure functional integration.
--Stuart Kauffman, MacArthur Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and author of Reinventing the Sacred

About the Author

John Fullerton is an unconventional economist, impact investor, writer, and, some have said, philosopher. He is considered the architect of Regenerative Economics, first conceived in 2015 in the work "Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Patterns and Principles Will Shape the New Economy."

After a successful 20-year career on Wall Street where he was a Managing Director of what he calls "the old JPMorgan," John listened to a persistent inner voice and walked away in 2001 with no plan, but many questions. A few months later he experienced the events of 9/11 firsthand, and after the 2008 Financial Crisis, John created the Capital Institute to explore ever deepening questions about the future of capitalism.

John's revolutionary ideas have been met with wide, global acclaim through his writings, talks, and his 8-week online course "Introduction to Regenerative Economics." A member of the Club of Rome, John was featured in the 2021 award winning documentary, Going Circular, with James Lovelock. He lives in Stonington, CT.