Last Friday I spent a half hour onstage in San Francisco discussing energy trends and choices with the energy analyst Amory B. Lovins and green business maven Joel Makower. This was the capping event of Verge 2013, a conference on commerce and sustainability run by Makower's GreenBiz Group.
The talk (preceded by my performance of "Liberated Carbon") is energetic, tight and, I think, well worth watching. Here are a couple of nuggets to prime the pump.
Makower asked me about my assertion that it's better to focus on traits than goals in pursuing progress on energy and climate change and the like (encapsulated in this Dot Earth post). In my reply I hailed a neat microgrid on display in a conference room, in which lights showed the path of electrons, and mused on the value of having energy on display in this way in schools. I added this thought about a great low-budget teaching opportunity that exists in every school in America:
One of the great classes that I don't see taught is [a course that could be called] "Let's go look at our furnace today, folks." Have the kids go into the boiler room. Have the kids look at the electric bill for their school. Teaching that energy matters, not in a chiding way… And then you can develop kids who are interested in pursuing these kinds of goals.
Lovins made an important point about the source of innovation and change to watch for and nurture, and one arena where he doesn't expect much progress:
Solving this problem is not really going to require international agreements so much as it'll be driven by the private sector and civil society in co-evolution, sped by military innovation – in other words spread by effective institutions and end-running the ineffective ones….
How did China make energy efficiency its top strategic priority for national development in the Eleventh Five Year Plan in 2005 [relevant link]. It wasn't because a treaty made them do it. There wasn't one. It was because people like Wen Jiabao understood that otherwise China couldn't afford to develop because the supply side would eat the budget. It was enlightened economic self interest.
Please watch the rest, including Lovins' breakdown of the hidden factors raising the real cost of natural gas. Then share the video with others and/or weigh in.
Disclosure note | I received no compensation for this appearance.
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