Amory and Hunter Lovins: Spokespersons for a Sustainable-energy Future
(Page 14 of 15)
July/August 1984
By the Mother Earth News editors
HUNTER: We've been looking for that list lately.
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AMORY: I also remember that number 20 on that list was surprises that we haven't thought of yet, and I'm sorry that I can't give you any examples, but there are certainly going to be some.
PLOWBOY: OK, excluding nuclear war and the surprises you haven't thought of yet, what would you predict?
AMORY: Well, I think that people will continue to be well ahead of their governments. That's not a surprise. The action in energy policy and most other things, as well — will continue to be at an individual and local or state level, not at the federal level. Those officials will be trying to catch up.
HUNTER: Some technologies are moving very rapidly, too. If either very cheap photovoltaic cells or photolysis-the breaking down of water using sunlight and a catalyst-comes through, we can all convert to hydrogen and quit worrying about energy. The big utility companies will be out of business. Those are the two jokers in the energy deck.
PLOWBOY: What do you think the next predictable crisis will be?
AMORY: Probably the integrated crisis of water, agriculture, an energy...
HUNTER: I also think there's a good chance of another reactor accident, one that will cause a public outcry to shut down a lot of operating reactors.
AMORY: Yes. I don't know whether it will be here, in France, or somewhere else, but it's going to happen. We've had some near misses.
HUNTER I also really do not understand why we have not yet seen major nuclear terrorism. I think that's likely, probably in the next five years. The thing I'm most scared about is what they call the cancer drop, in which conventional explosives are wrapped in nuclear material and contaminate a big chunk of a city. At that point, people will be really tempted to bring in a leader who will resort to police and military "answers" ... so-called answers, because of course such steps can't do a thing to stop that kind of terrorism.
But if people can learn the skills of doing for themselves — like the Economic Renewal Project we're talking about — before this type of crisis comes up, then there will be a much greater tendency to react in a sane and considered way.
PLOWBOY: Then you agre with René Dubos's dictum, "Think globally, act locally"?
HUNTER: That's what it comes down to. There are a few peopleand occasionally we're among them-who have the opportunity to do something that really has a global effect. But the option for most people is to work locally while seeing themselves as part of a global context. That's not "punting" on the global problems, because, as we said, the only long-term solution we see to the questions of national security and the arms race is to begin to build security from the bottom up in very mundane ways.
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