Taoism for a Sustainable Future with Amory Lovins

Physicist Amory Lovins is Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization working to transform the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future.

He has written more than 800 papers and 31 books, including Natural Capitalism, Reinventing Fire, and Winning the Oil Endgame. For the past 45 years, he’s advised major firms and governments in over 70 countries on clean energy—including the US Departments of Energy and Defense and a 7-year stint on the National Petroleum Council—as well as leading integrative design for superefficient buildings, factories, and vehicles. Time has named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers.

A Harvard and Oxford dropout, he’s taught at 10 universities, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Scholar of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. He teaches only topics he’s never formally studied, so as to retain Beginner’s Mind—a concept we’ll get into in today’s conversation. 

This is a much different side of Amory Lovins than you'll find in other public interviews.

In this conversation, we talk about early childhood influences and illnesses, the 15 summers he spent guiding trips in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—a place that sparked his life-long interest in landscape photography and utter devotion to the natural world. I ask him what it’s been like to be a pioneer in the clean energy space, facing the almost mythical powers of the fossil fuel industries, the impending threats of climate change, and decades of scrutiny from critics and those with vested interest in the status quo.

We discuss biomimicry, natural capital, and integrative design, and the laws of nature that can help us build and live much more efficiently and harmoniously—concepts he discusses using the example of his own home office in Old Snowmass, Colorado, complete with a 900-square-foot tropical passive-solar banana farm inside. Amory quotes environmentalists, writers, spiritual leaders, sacred texts, and the Taoist outlook that keeps him centered and focused in order to carry out his work in the world.

RMI.org

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