RockyRocky MountainMountain Institute/volumeInstitute/volume xviiixviii #2/Summer#2/Summer 20022002 RMISolutions newsletter H u n t er Ta kes o f f on Solo C a reer RMI Cofounder Begins Independent Career Focused on Natural Capitalism B y Cameron M. Burns of pride for RMI, and her love of eques- traveling with Amory, translating his his issue of RMI Solutions trian activities helped define the work from the original “demotic marks the end of one era and Institute—indeed, her black cowboy hat Martian” into plain English, written and T the beginning of another. is one of the sustainability community’s spoken. In 1982, as they drove across Citing a desire to work independently of most-recognized icons. the country in their little pickup truck, the Institute, RMI cofounder L. Hunter Hunter’s first major project will be fin- she suggested that they start their own Lovins resigned in early June. ishing her book, The Human Dimensions nonprofit think- and do-tank, where like- “I’ve been thinking about going out on of Natural Capitalism, with Global thinking colleagues would gather my own for some time,” Academy founder Walter together to craft solutions to the world’s she said. “There are Link. She will also work problems. Thus was RMI born. many, many opportunities on the creation of the Much of her time in the early days was that come my way. The Natural Capitalism spent handling everyday operations of day-to-day running of RMI Academy, an educational the fledgling Institute (whose headquar- has prohibited me from organization that will ters she helped design and build), over- focusing on what I really develop curricula and continued on page 33 want to do: take natural educational programs capitalism to a greater based on her 1999 book audience. I still expect to Natural Capitalism (co- be associated with RMI Photo: Norm Clasen authored with Amory and some of its projects, L. H u n t er Lovins Lovins and Paul CONTENTS but primarily I’ll be working Hawken). Hunter is pas- EAST OST ECURITY p a ge 2 with other organizations.” sionate about making natural capitalism L C S ....... Hunter will be greatly missed—not only the leading principle for business, and PERSPECTIVES ..........p a ge 6 because she co-founded and for many has long hoped to focus on that goal. “I GREEN CHINA p a ge 8 years co-led RMI with colleague Amory believe now I’ll be able to bring natural ........... B. Lovins, but because her influence was capitalism to a wide business audience,” LIFE AT RMI ...........p a ge 11 so great. Her ideas and thinking helped she said. GREEN SCHOOLS .........p a ge 12 shape RMI’s approach to energy (where Although today Hunter is a world-recog- she also conceived what became E nized celebrity in the energy and sustain- RMI NEWS ...........p a ge 16 SOURCE), water, climate, communities, ability communities, her roots are WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ......p a ge 21 green buildings and development, and modest. In 1977, she heard Amory business. Meanwhile, her personal life Lovins’s ideas about energy policy and DONOR SPOT: MARGIE HALEY ...p a ge 22 was and remains colorful, interesting, realized this message—which encour- BOARD SPOT: JOHN FOX ......p a ge 23 and driven by a strong sense of right and aged society to ponder the end uses for wrong. Her service with the Basalt Rural energy (cold beer and hot showers) OTHER VOICES: STEPHEN KELLERT p a ge 24 Fire Protection District, where she has before finding the best-matched way to STAFF SPOT: MARTY HAGEN ....p a ge 28 helped save many lives, has been a point supply it—was worth sharing. She began NATCAP STORIES ........ p a ge 34 Le ast C ost Security As the United States awaits another terror episode, RMI offers a few thoughts on security B y A mory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, and Cameron M. Burns n 1992, referring to the break-up of edly a reality. Its first major episode gave deeply about what security really means the Soviet Union, then Joint Chiefs of over a million-fold economic leverage to and how it is best achieved. How and I Staff Chair General Colin Powell the attackers, who achieved trillions of dol- where do you best invest to make the stated, “We no longer have the luxury of lars’ worth of direct and indirect economic United States and the world safer? having a threat to prepare for.” Nuclear damage with about a half-million-dollar war was The Great Threat, the disaster investment. N E W T HIN KIN G F O R A that loomed largest Despite survival D A N GER O US W O RL D during the past half- “Peace is not the absence of war; it is rates of around 90 Traditionally, the locus of power and action century of human the presence of justice.” percent in the has been governments. Yet this fixation on existence. In that World Trade governmental institutions and international utterly annihilating —Martin Luther King, Jr. Center and 99.5 instruments is dangerously incomplete and form, its risk seems percent in the obsolete. to have receded. Pentagon, the psychological effect was pro- Yet we are not safer. Any American city is Today’s world is tripolar, with power and found. And despite strenuous efforts at now at even greater risk of disappearing in action focused not only in governments, intelligence and prevention, an open a bright flash tomorrow morning, vapor- but also in the private sector the organiza- society—especially America’s, rife with ized by a bomb with no radar track to tions that make up the internet-empowered extraordinarily brittle and inefficient infra- show its return address. Such anonymous civil society, and complex interactions structure—has so many vulnerabilities that attacks are undeterrable and nearly unpre- among these three actors. In a world where many experts expect another reality check ventable. Eleven thousand dollars a second change can occur very quickly and through to come soon, and more after that. The spent on the world’s finest military are not diverse means and channels, government is potential for evil, once so hard to imagine, making us safe. To start backing away from increasingly the slowest and least effective remains unimaginably vast. As New York the long-hidden abyss now opening around part of the triad. Business and civil society, Times columnist Thomas Friedman our nation’s aspirations requires engage- often in alliance, are rapidly taking up the remarked, we had two failures of imagina- ment vastly more comprehensive than tra- slack. tion—first in envisaging such evil, and ditional military means. Further complicating this three-part dance, then in envisaging a countervailing good. each member of the triad has a sort of Many of us have long feared that other At the moment when most Americans antiparticle: rogue governments, like the kind of war, the deadly and erosive attri- were ready to stand up and contribute to Taliban; rogue businesses, like Monsanto tion that has long been played out on news getting off oil, constructive leadership was and Enron; and rogue nongovernmental reports of Israel and Palestine, of Belfast largely absent. and Ulster, of San Salvador and Managua: organizations, like al Qa‘eda. While those longer-term tasks gain terrorism. For Americans, it’s now belat- The old world model saw governments momentum, we all need to think more p a ge 2 ruling physical territory inside which national economies functioned. Strong A Brig h t a n d Si m ple Id e a national economies rested on military might. In a sense, globalization is not new. uilding real security can be as simple and as It began before the great sailing ships. grassroots-based as a compact fluorescent From Alexander, Genghis Khan, and the B lamp (CFL). A typical CFL costs $3–12, saves Romans to the East India Company and four-fifths of the electricity used by an incandescent the Opium Wars, national military power bulb, lasts 8–13 times longer, looks similar, fits the same secured and protected access to resources fixtures and, over the course of its life, will save and markets. What is new is the unfet- $30–80 more than it costs. In fact, it’s generally tered power of transnational corporations, cheaper to give away CFLs than it is to run fossil-fueled which increasingly can influence or evade power plants needed to power incandescent bulbs. the rules of whatever country they wish to One such CFL, over its life, will avoid putting in the air from do business in. Economic decisions now a typical coal-fired power plant one ton of carbon dioxide, eight pay little attention to sovereignty. Trillions kilograms of sulfur oxides, and four kilograms of nitrogen oxides. In of dollars flee at the clicks of a few mice, terms of electricity generated by oil, it saves the burning of a barrel of oil and all the leaving national economies vulnerable and, attendant emissions. Or, if we’re talking about a nuclear power plant, one CFL, over in some instances, governments unable to the course of its life, will avoid making two-fifths of a ton TNT-equivalent of pluto- look after their people because they cannot nium plus half a curie (which is a lot) of strontium-90 and cesium-137. control their economies. If widely deployed, CFLs could by one-fifth cut the evening peak load that crashes the Globalists argue that this business grid in Bombay. They could raise a North Carolina chicken grower’s profits by one- autonomy boosts economic growth.