Reply #44: That "evidence" is only "damning" when you nuclear folks take it out of context

[kristopher]

...Mr. Lovins led the energy design for his home (and RMI’s original headquarters), whose ~99% savings in space- and water-heating energy (to –44°C or –47°F) and ~90% in home electricity paid back in ten months with 1983 technology. An $18-million utility experiment he cofounded and -steered in the 1990s, PG&E’s “ACT²,” validated his claim that very large energy savings could cost less than small or no savings, e.g. in houses comfortable with no air conditioner at up to +46ºC (+115°F) yet costing less to build. He founded and until 2007 chaired RMI’s fourth spinoff, the advanced-composites technology developer Fiberforge Corporation, and is RMI’s lead practitioner—lately helping redesign >$30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors—in implementing for major firms the tenets of natural capitalism, which shared the 2001 Shingo Prize (Research), the “Nobel Prize for Manufacturing.” In 2004, he led a Pentagon-cosponsored synthesis of how to eliminate U.S. oil use, led by business for profit, and in 2007, became the first member of the Transformation Advisory Council for the Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company. His other senior advisory relationships have lately served the leaders of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Holcim, Interface, and Wal-Mart and of several startup firms.

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress; and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

Mr. Lovins has briefed 21 heads of state, given expert testimony in eight countries and 20+ states, delivered thousands of lectures, and written 31 books and more than 450 papers, as well as poetry, landscape photography, music (he was a pianist and composer), and an electronics patent. In 1980–81 he served on the U.S. Department of Energy’s senior advisory board, and in 1999–2001 and 2006–08, on Defense Science Board task forces on military energy strategy. In 1984 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for his book Soft Energy Paths and many other noteworthy contributions to energy policy,” in 1988, of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2001, of the World Business Academy. Dr. Alvin Weinberg, former Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, called him “surely the most articulate writer on energy in the whole world today; "Newsweek, "one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers.” Dr. John Ahearne, then Vice President of Resources for the Future, remarked that “Amory Lovins has done more to assemble and advance understanding of efficiency opportunities than any other single person.” The Centennial Issue of The Wall Street Journal named him among 39 people in the world most likely to change the course of business in the 1990s; Car called him the 22nd most powerful person in the global car industry; and The Economist wrote in 2008 that “history has proved him right.”

An occasional advisor to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mr. Lovins has addressed hundreds of fora sponsored by such groups as The Engineering Foundation, Association of Energy Engineers, ASHRAE, Society of Automotive Engineers, Royal Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, American Physical Society, International Association for Energy Economics, Montreux Energy Forum, Institution of Electrical Engineers, McKinsey, Accenture, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan, Allen & Co., News Corporation, Fortune, Forbes, Time, ULI, IDRC, CoreNet, AIA, API, AAPG, AGA, EEI, EPRI, CRIEPI, Hoover and Brookings Institutions, CSIS, Chatham House, Council on Foreign Relations, Pacific Council, Commonwealth Club, Keidanren, Conference Board, World Economic Forum, Tällberg Conference, TED, FiRE, eg, World Bank, GBN, Highlands Forum, NPS, NWC, NDU, DAU, Aspen Design Conference, Royal Society, and Royal Society of Arts. He collaborates on landscape photography and orangutan conservation with his wife, fine-art landscape photographer Judy Hill Lovins.

He was warning of the need to take action on climate change as early as 1975.

WTF have you done for the planet today?