The Escalating Energy Crisis: Principles and Progress

Physicist, energy industry consultant, and environmentalist Amory Lovins will discuss the steps necessary to break our oil dependency and create wealth, enhance choice and strengthen common security. Oil is increasingly becoming a challenge through volatile pricing, supply and transport vulnerabilities, emissions, global competition and security issues. Lovins will offer insight into the variety of market-based solutions to dependency on fossil fuels.

Lovins co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank focused on sustainable energy and conversation, based in Colorado. He there unveiled the “hypercar,” a hydrogen-powered, super-light, ultra-efficient automobile as a model of change for big industry. He has popularized and continuously advocated for the “soft energy path,” as means to diversify energy resources and use existing resources more efficiently.

Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood ("Alternative Nobel"), nine honorary degrees, the World Technology Award, Time Hero for the Planet Award, the Happold Medal, Nissan, Shingo, Mitchell, and Onassis Prize, Lovins is also the author or co-author of twenty-nine books. Lovins attended Harvard University before transferring to Oxford, where he earned his M.A in experimental physics.

This program was recorded live on December 4, 2006