Keynote: Amory Lovins: Winning the Oil Endgame
The cofounder and CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute, physicist Amory Lovins is the most important figure in the history of the "alternative energy" movement. He offers a realistic outline of how we can achieve a prosperous post-petroleum economy through cutting-edge design innovations, radically enhanced resource efficiency and judicious use of biofuels and hydrogen. With business and civil society in the vanguard, we can get off oil attractively and profitably while revitalizing key industrial sectors and protecting the climate.
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Amory Lovins Talk
The technological possibilities ARE exciting, but I have some problems with relying on the vision of big business; I think Lenin's dictum that "the capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with" highlights the other side of the mercantile mentality: it responds to its self-interest, yes, but it tends to respond best to SHORT-term interests, often with disastrous results, and to prejudices and cultural protocols that undercut self-preservation; the majority of US business hated FDR, even though his 'adjustments' to the free market SAVED capitalism--for the moment, at least. Further, I have a problem with his assumption that the only way to foster great change is through the market place; other agencies have worked in the past, and the problem with relying on the capitalists is that if they succeed, they are still here. A "green" boss is still a boss, and although it is theoretically possible (barely) to imagine a capitalist economy that is earth-friendly, it is by definition impossible to imagine one that is PEOPLE-friendly.
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