By L. Hunter Lovins and Amory B. Lovins Also in Green@Work May/June 2000. [download .pdf of full article, PART I] [download .pdf of full article, PART II] PART I: Twenty-three years ago, claims that energy efficiency would shift United States energy use patterns, reducing overall consumption far below official forecasts, were laughed at. Today, total U.S. energy use is below the level suggested in the “soft energy path” (see figure). In all but five of the intervening years the amount of energy consumed per dollar of GDP fell—a total drop of more than 35 percent since 1973. Renewable energy sources, delayed by...

Also in Conservation Biology, Volume 16 #2, 2000. H. L. Menchen said that for every problem there is an answer that is short, simple, and wrong.  David Orr is one of the few thinkers who seeks to understand the broad-reaching interconnections among problems, and their relationships to biological diversity, conservation issues, and the creation of a decent and healthy world. Such a vision across boundaries enables him to see root causes and to offer answers based on whole-system understanding. He is correct that our current vulnerability–economic, ecological, food, security–is not so much a result of too little military, as it is...

By L. Hunter Lovins & Amory Lovins Also in The World and I [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][download .pdf of full article] Pioneering companies in sectors ranging from wire to plastic films and planned residential communities have already demonstrated that today’s environmental challenges hold many profit-enhancing opportunities. The late twentieth century witnessed two great intellectual shifts: the fall of communism, with the apparent triumph of market economics; and the emergence, in a rapidly growing number of businesses, of the end of the war against the earth,...

By L Hunter Lovins & Amory Lovins This article served as a basis for the U.S. negotiating position at Kyoto … [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][download .pdf of full article] ABSTRACT: Arguments that protecting the earth’s climate will cost a lot rest on theoretical economic assumptions flatly contradicted by business experience. Most climate/economics models assume that almost all energy-efficiency investments cost-effective at present prices have already been made. Actually, huge opportunities to save money by saving energy exist, but are being blocked by dozens of specific obstacles...

By L. Hunter Lovins & Michael Kinsley [download .pdf of full article] Residents of many growing towns and cities are learning the hard way that growth is not the solution to their economic woes. While they enjoy the benefits of growth, they also are vexed by the problems it causes: traffic congestion, crime, long commutes, air pollution, increasing intolerance, disrespect for traditional leadership, and increasingly cutthroat competition in local business. Rapid growth often causes higher rents, housing shortages, spiraling costs, and  demands for higher wages to meet the higher cost of living. Communities tolerate these side effects in hopes  of...

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] Climatic Change October 1992 A recent survey paper [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][1] on modern techniques for preventing anthropogenic climatic change concludes: Global warming is not a natural result of normal, optimal economic activity. Rather, it is an artifact of the economically inefficient use of resources, especially energy. Advanced technologies for resource efficiency, and new ways to implement them, can now support...

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] Climatic Change December 1990 Jesse Ausubel’s review (Ausubel, 1982) of our recent joint analysis (Lovins et al., 1982) stimulates us to suggest, in the same friendly spirit, a few respects in which he missed the mark. In considering how little energy could be used, and how little fossil fuel burned, if people used energy in a way that saved money, we do not feel we were being ‘extremely optimistic’, but rather soberly realistic. Perhaps Ausubel means by ‘optimistic’ something like...

Climatic Change 1982 [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] If all the climatologists in the world were laid end to end, they might never reach a conclusion about the seriousness of the COi problem. But they have been led to accept one assumption about it: that increases in the rate of burning fossil fuel are inevitable (and essential for global development). Elaborate analyses of the climatic consequences of releasing carbon from fossil fuel have been built on that assumption. But the ingenuity...