Business Can Do It All
Amory Lovins is head of The Rocky Mountain Institute and one of the great visionaries of the environmental movement. He was also named by
Time magazine one of the World’s 100 most influential people of 2009. He did a 40-minute lecture at the University of California recently titled “
Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era” filled with optimism that there are solutions within our reach for environmental problems. He believes that innovations and application of technologies now on the shelf can lead to a far more mobil U.S. economy by 2050 that will consume no oil whatsoever. Vehicles will be electric-powered and much lighter, and buildings many times more energy efficient, as we apply new materials and construction technologies to create goods and services better and more plentiful than those we now enjoy.
This will all be done by businesses and individuals, pretty much independently of government, adapting to the reality that our petroleum-based economy is too expensive: Lovins estimates that the all-in cost of gasoline is four times what we now pay at the pump. I suggest you listen to Lovins’ full lecture. Despite all the variables and complexities, it’s refreshing to have a man of his stature say that our macro problems can be solved within the old American, individualistic way of acting from enlightened, and imaginative, self interest.
