Amory Lovins is a physicist, economist, inventor, automobile designer, consultant to 18 heads of state, author of 29 books, and cofounder of Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental think tank. Most of all, he's a man who takes pride in saving energy. The electricity bill at his 4,000-square-foot home in Old Snowmass, Colorado, is five dollars a month, and he's convinced he can do the same for all of us. His book Winning the Oil Endgame shows how the United States can save as much oil as it gets from the Persian Gulf by 2015 and how all oil imports can be eliminated by 2040. And that's just for starters.
As told to Cal Fussman
When I give talks about energy, the audience already knows about the problems. That's not what they've come to hear. So I don't talk about problems, only solutions. But after a while, during the question period, someone in the back will get up and give a long riff about all the bad things that are happening—most of which are basically true. There's only one way I've found to deal with that. After this person calms down, I gently ask whether feeling that way makes him more effective.
As René Dubos, the famous biologist, once said, "Despair is a sin."
Energy
