The New Yorker has a great profile of Amory Lovins written by journalist, book author, and interviewee Elizabeth Kolbert. (It's not online -- check last week's issue.)
It's a fantastic piece, really capturing Lovins' entrepreneurial drive not just to do research and develop strategies but to evangelize for his perspective. He's tireless trying to get his stuff into the right hands.
I suspect most everybody in the green world has mixed feelings about Lovins, and the piece captures that as well. On one hand, reading Lovins for the first time can be a life-changing experience, one of those moments when your entire perception of the world shifts and you see everything in a new light. Kolbert writes:
To spend time with Lovins is to see the world as one long string of bad decisions. Waste and profligacy are everywhere: in inefficient lights, heat-leaking windows, gas-guzzling trucks, poorly designed eateries. It's not that people are stupid, exactly. It's that their intelligence is limited. When they make decisions, they tend to worry only about their own self-interest, which they see in such narrow terms that they miss the larger opportunities all around.
Lovins's world is filled with perverse incentives. To get the change we want, we don't have to strain and push. We just have to remove the barriers that are holding it back. Revelatory news!
But then, there's the nagging thought. Lovins can always talk and explain and persuade better than we can -- he's a friggin' genius -- but the intuitive question keeps returning: if there were so many errors, and so much benefit to be gained by correcting them, and it's all so easy ... why isn't it happening? Something doesn't fit. Kolbert writes:
Lovins's promise that apparently intractable problems -- oil dependence, global warming, nuclear proliferation -- can be profitably resolved is both the great appeal of his approach and its biggest liability. Much of what he recommends sounds just too good to be true, the econometric version of "Shed pounds by eating chocolate!"
I can't resolve that tension, but I can recommend Kolbert's piece.
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Comments
View as Flat
sunflower Posted 8:23 am
22 Jan 2007
He once described the energy use since the middle ages. Humanity has consistently improved energy efficiency on a per capita basis. With all our machines, we now use one-third the energy of that used during the beast of burden era. We will easily make the same efficiency leap again.
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GRLCowan Posted 9:04 am
22 Jan 2007
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.energy.hydrogen/msg/f6f...
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.energy.hydrogen/msg/b68...
Plus there's this one, better than any of mine, capturing the essence in just 15 words ... or rather, capturing the propane:
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.environment/msg/e352954...
--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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bkrell Posted 2:25 pm
22 Jan 2007
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Tom Athanasiou Posted 5:28 pm
22 Jan 2007
Thus the general, dreaming over his charts, does not consider muddy tracks, missed rendevous, divided loyalies.
Also, you gotta think that Lovins, just because he is so bright, might be particularly prone to this sort of error.
On the other hand, he might just be doing what he does best. After all, he has his greatest impact by stayone on message.
-- toma
Tom Athanasiou
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Steven T Posted 12:48 am
23 Jan 2007
Amory thinks like an engineer -- he really believes good design can save all. This is an underlying flaw of so much rhetoric in the "sustainabiility" movement.
Sure, we can to some degree "engineer" our way out of ecological crises such as global warming. What is not adequately appreciated is that political power relationships go a long way toward determining design outcomes. Here Amory has always been tone deaf. Frankly, so have some other major sustainability voices.
We need to get beyond bright white guys designing cool new toys.
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pbearden47 Posted 1:39 am
23 Jan 2007
There may be political forces that are resistant, but I do think industrial/corporate America is starting to move toward the idea that energy efficiency is better for the bottom line.
Aunt Phyllis
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jhutson Posted 2:04 pm
06 Feb 2007
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erich Posted 8:48 pm
14 Feb 2007
Thanks
Dear Ms. Kolbert,
I haven't read your book, but had to immediately write to you after your "Talk of the Town" piece in the recent New Yorker. The grasp you have on this problem is unsurpassed for such a short piece. Many of the principals you talk of involved in anthroprogenic global warming I have posted to, but your piece is a target-rich environment for those that I have missed. Thank you for this laundry list that I'll be cleaning up my work with. I have already posted to Exxon, et al, when the news first came out that they dropped AEI support a few weeks ago, it should be interesting when their financial reports are out and we get to see who else and how much they spent. Now the rest of the day I'll be posting to the energy policy people that you highlighted.
I wished to apprise them of this integrated energy and carbon sequestration technology.
After many years of reviewing solutions to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) I believe this technology
can manage Carbon for the greatest collective benefit at the lowest economic price.
Below is my review of these efforts in the Academic and private sectors, please forward this to all the experts you know, if you think it merits their time and support.
Thanks for your attention
Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
E-mail: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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robinhoodstfrancis Posted 2:44 am
01 Mar 2008
I am thankful for Lovins' work and attitudes. While he promotes the efficiency imperatives within Neoliberalism's false, but powerful, premises, I support the reform and alternatives of what might be called "democratic-maximization economics". As William Greider discusses in his book The Soul of Capitalism, the solution lies in the obvious focus on responsible ownership practice, as promoted by ESOP's and more.
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