RockyRocky MountainMountain Institute/volumeInstitute/volume xviixvii #3/Fall#3/Fall 20012001 Brit tle Ti m es, R M I’s Resp onse B y A mory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins wreaked havoc. A week later, revenge. Amidst talk of technology and ret- their violence was threatening ribution, we need understanding and trans- to hijack much of U.S. policy. formation. Their attack so outrages • America’s distinctive strengths flow from common decency as to tempt her diversity, freedom, and tolerance—pre- reactions that Americans cisely the qualities that are most under would abhor in normal attack, most precious, and most vital not to times—bombing civilians impair. Terrorists succeed if they drive us to ruled by despots considered deny our values and diminish our free- complicit, eroding civil liber- doms. ties, blaming anyone who • The attackers hope to provoke a looks or thinks differently, jihad/crusade confrontation between rushing to military and energy America and Islam, and more broadly to choices that would be inflame tensions between the powerful and repented at leisure. But if the dispossessed. We defeat this goal if we policy simply reacts to the ter- continued on next page rorists, they win. America and the world need rather to address root causes: to reas- sume global leadership in helping all people to fulfill CONTENTS their legitimate aspirations for OTHER VOICES: ERIC RASMUSSEN ..p a ge 4 a safe and decent life. BATTLING WASTE INTHE MILITARY . p a ge 6 The terrorist attack elicited T h e eve n ts o f 11 S e p t e m b er m ig h t h ave p er- m a n e n tly a lt ere d o u r u n d erst a n din g o f wh at is wide agreement on some FUEL CELLS ...........p a ge 10 re q uire d t o m a in t a in a f re e a n d o p e n socie ty. obvious but sometimes over- PERSPECTIVES ..........p a ge 11 looked points: rom its inception, Rocky Mountain • Murdering innocent people is a supreme INSURMOUNTABLE OPPORTUNITIES . p a ge 12 Institute has worked to promote a evil in the eyes of every religion, emphati- secure, prosperous, and life-sus- “AN APPLE A DAY” ........p a ge 14 F cally including Islam. This applies to ter- taining world. On 11 September, those rorism—and to America’s response to it. DEAR ROCKY ...........p a ge 16 goals came under attack—magnifying their importance and urgency. We can best • The perpetrators must be brought to jus- LIFE AT RMI ...........p a ge 17 tice under the rule of law, and with great honor the thousands of victims, citizens of WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ......p a ge 18 over 80 nations throughout the world, by care not to harm the innocent. recommitting to create such a future. Indiscriminately violent retaliation would MIKE CURZAN ..........p a ge 25 undermine all we’re fighting for. A world of A handful of people with plastic knives and DONOR SPOTLIGHT ....... p a ge 28 justice and compassion is morally, as well box-cutters seized four airplanes and as practically, better than a world of ALEXIS KAROLIDES ....... p a ge 33 burst—upwind of many American cities. For example, The Nation (16 September) and U.S. News and World Report (17 September) report that over half of U.S. nuclear plants routinely fail basic site-secu- rity tests even when given advance notice. (They just went on maximum alert, but that doesn’t mean they could repel a com- petent attack.) It doesn’t take a crashing widebody jet to unleash their lethal inven- tories (though that would); a few people could do it on the ground, in some cases without entering the plant’s site. Despite this threat and nuclear power’s disastrous economics (see “Gone Fission,” p. 11), its proponents nonetheless want, and have so N ew Yor k as we a ll re m e m b er it. T h e 11 S e p t e m b er at t a c ks will h ave i m pli- c atio ns for us a ll. far gotten, even bigger subsidies to support expansion, and seem about to win instead build a new solidarity between to the Lord of the Universe who has cre- renewal of their liability exemption. In those working to achieve a just and sus- ated us and made us into tribes and contrast, as David Lochbaum of the Union tainable society and those for whom it is a nations / That we may know each other, of Concerned Scientists noted, nobody is distant abstraction. Terrorists are bred not that we may despise each other … asking about terrorist threats to wind- amid social and economic conditions that And the servants of God, most gracious are mills—which also produce power sooner create despair and fury. To the extent that those who walk on the Earth in humility, and cheaper. enhancing sustainability can relieve those and when we address them, we say Our 1982 Pentagon study Brittle Power: conditions, we both do right and increase ‘Peace.’” Energy Strategy for National Security, still everyone’s security. • The United States is extremely vulner- the definitive unclassified work, showed • Many people in the world are pro- able, not just because it’s a free and open how accepting market verdicts could grad- foundly angry at America, and it would be society, but also because of the fragile ually, steadily, turn vulnerability into wise to understand why. Wall Street architecture of its complex, centralized, resilience. The foundation of a secure Journal correspondent Jonathan Kwitney, interdependent technical systems— energy system is to need less energy in the in his disquieting book Endless Enemies: gigantic pipelines, powerlines, dams, first place, then to get it from sources that The Making of an Unfriendly World, refineries, chemical and nuclear com- are inherently invulnerable because chronicles scores of countries where venal, plexes. This vulnerable design makes they’re diverse, dispersed, renewable, and stupid, or insensitive U.S. behavior, over future attacks both more probable and mainly local. They’re secure not because decades, turned potential friends into foes. potentially far worse. We’ve long been sur- they’re American but because of their If we want other countries to think well of prised these weaknesses weren’t exploited design. Any highly centralized energy us, he concludes, we should be the kind of sooner and more fully. A great deal more system—pipelines, nuclear plants, people one would like to do business with, work is needed to identify these vulnera- refineries—invites devastating attack. But and should ensure that whoever comes to bilities and design them out. invulnerable alternatives don’t, and can’t power in other countries has never been Consider, for example, the opportunisti- fail on a large scale. Ignored in the current shot at by an American gun. That seems cally renewed push for uneconomic and debate but available in the marketplace, simple and effective, pragmatic and princi- extraordinarily vulnerable energy technolo- they’re also cheaper and more reliable. In pled. As we seek to understand other cul- gies, such as expanded dependence on the time, they can make major energy inter- tures, honor their differences, and respect Trans-Alaska Pipeline (RMI Solutions, Vol. ruptions impossible. Thus real energy secu- social goals that may diverge widely from 17, No. 1, spring '01) and on nuclear rity comes from choosing the best buys our own, we need to hear the reasons for power, which holds billions of curies of first; not bailing out market failures; the anger of those who do not feel heard. releasable radioactivity—rivaling the building a balanced portfolio of competi- As a Muslim prayer reminds us, “Praise be fallout from a megaton-range ground- tive demand- and supply-side investments; p a ge 2 and preferring energy options invulnerable national governments; and without their own. Anger grows as they watch to cutoff by accident or malice. Happily, all needing to use or threaten violence. It their loved ones die of diseases that disap- these virtues coincide in the same tech- comes from making others more secure, peared years ago in developed nations. nologies—the ones current policy disfa- not less, whether on the scale of the vil- Leaders who foster hatred of the devel- vors. Why should some of the gravest lage or the globe. It is rooted in conflict oped nations suddenly sound reasonable. threats to national energy security come avoidance or prevention; bolstered by con- “Those who have wealth grow increas- from the energy policy of our own govern- flict resolution; and backstopped by non- ingly fearful of the masses of poor people. ment? provocative defense, which can reliably They become resentful that their wealth To some extent, RMI can offer these defeat aggression without threatening does not give them the freedom and safety answers. In other realms, we have only others. This new security triad from they once assumed it would create. just begun to pose the questions. For Security Without War—a prescient 1993 Leaders who tell them that the poor are a example, the work that Hunter Lovins and RMI book by Hal Harvey and Mike threat to their well-being suddenly sound Walter Link of the Global Academy have Shuman—suggests that though there is a reasonable. vital role for the military professionals with been doing on globalization raises some “It is a recipe for madness. A blueprint for whom RMI has long worked (see “Battling intriguing issues.