Hope Practical Rather than Despair Convincing
“To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.”
- Raymond Williams
I’ve been listening to podcasts of Amory Lovins this week, and I must say, he is my new hero. Find them here. (I’m not sure if all of the talks are listed, but you can also look here.)
Lovins is the Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. RMI is a think tank that focuses on energy efficiency and policy.
Their mission statement:
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit organization. We foster the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining.
Our staff shows businesses, communities, individuals, and governments how to create more wealth and employment, protect and enhance natural and human capital, increase profit and competitive advantage, and enjoy many other benefits — largely by doing what they do far more efficiently.
Our work is independent, nonadversarial, and transideological, with a strong emphasis on market-based solutions. For detailed descriptions of our Research & Consulting within the Natural Capitalism Framework as well as our activities and areas of impact, please follow the links at left.
In the talks that I am so excited about, Lovins speaks at Stanford on issues of energy efficiency in buildings, industry, and transportation.
If your like me, you worry about things like global warming, wars in the Middle East over oil, the horrible state of the American economy, the environment.
Well, imagine spending 10 hours listening to someone talk about how we can build cars, buildings, and industry that is 3, 5, 10 times more efficient, create jobs, stimulate the economy, and become energy self sufficient for LESS money than we are spending now wasting energy.
He’s got some incredible concepts. One of my favorites, “driving through the cost barrier.” Normally, when architects and engineers, planners and business people think of efficiency, they think there is a law of diminishing returns. If you spend x amount, you might get 10% more efficient, but then you have to spend more and more to get smaller and smaller percentages more efficient, and after a while you may as well not bother.
Mr. Lovins though sees it differently. If you spend enough on say super insulating windows than your building may need a much smaller air conditioner or furnace, or maybe it won’t need one at all. So all that money you spent on windows, you saved on expensive equipment, never mind the energy savings, you just saved a pile of money in construction.
Another theme he discussed, is thinking about the entire system. Some great examples. In offices and factories there are often large banks of light switches that people don’t want to mess with. By spending a few dollars on labels, people know which switches they can turn off, and thousands of dollars can be saved.
Or more dramatically. He was talking about a plant in the desert that makes compressed natural gas. Now, to compress the gas, they cool it. But the plant is in the desert. He saved them $59 MILLION (yes million, I wasn’t sure if I remembered this right, it seemed too high until I found this doc on google [search for sand in the doc, you'll go right to it.]) by putting white sand around everything so they wouldn’t have to cool the gas as much.
If you need a dose of hope, put these in your iPod and have a listen.
