Get Amory Lovins on the Daily Show

[tongodeon]

I met Amory Lovins a few years ago at a private conference. He gave a dazzling talk about practical engineering, efficiency, new energy sources, and how private corporations can make massive amounts of money by doing the right thing. I was impressed by his quick wit, encyclopedic knowlege, and ability to say things that simultaneously sound

Comments

[steeltoe]

The producers answer the phones when you call for tickets. Really.

[veritatem]

yeah i'd call or send an email or both. and i'm going to check out the commonwealth podcast, thank you!

[mmcirvin]

Interesting. I've heard people complaining about Lovins who seem to find his essential optimism irresponsible for one reason or another.

Those people seem to fall into two camps. There are the people like Mark A. R. Kleiman, who think nuclear power is the only way to keep civilization going and conservation and renewables can only ever nibble around the edges, and don't like that he's against nukes. Then there are people like Kunstler who think Western civilization is going to go down hard, there's nothing we fat stupid evil pigs can do about our impending comeuppance, and people like Lovins are only keeping us from adequately preparing for the horrors of the long night after the Collapse.

About nukes, I'm still not sure what I think. I think that environmentalists who primarily concentrate on being anti-nuclear have their priorities screwed, and activist groups that use overblown NIMBY fear of nuclear plants to raise funds bother me. But, on the other hand, when it comes to nuclear power as a policy, I appreciate the

[tongodeon]

Amory isn't "anti-nuclear" at least in the same way that Greenpeace is anti-nuclear. He just thinks it's not going to be an efficient and economical way to solve the problem, not just because nuclear isn't cost-effective, but because central power stations in general aren't as cost-effective as micropower with the additional benefits of cogeneration and zero transmission loss. The full answer starts at 46:42.

The good news is that you don't have to convince the public or Amory that central nuclear power plants are a good idea. You just have to build one cheaply that can operate safely and start selling power. If you can manage to do that cheaper than micropower coal, gas, or renewable energy distributed over a smart grid without taking taxpayer dollars to do it then you'll not only be entitled to a decent profit but Amory will applaud you, because that's all that matters to him (or anyone else) in the end.

[mmcirvin]

The more passionate advocates of nuclear power have this idea that it'd be possible to do that if the government and the damned treehuggers didn't make it so hard. This kind of explanation has always struck me as suspicious, similar to the claim that it's mainly government interference keeping us from running profitable spaceliners. There are a lot of regulations on power plants, but some problems are inherently difficult.

So I guess my own thinking about the subject tends to be not far off from Lovins'. I also think that in the long term the market will probably decide; I suppose what people like Kleiman think is that nukes may be expensive but micropower is actually a lot more expensive than Lovins says it is, because of economies of scale.

[annamaryse]

OT, I always wondered about that icon... ahhhhhhhh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aDVlFzF5Kk

[tongodeon]

It was, at the time, one of the most obscure references I could drop.