Amory Lovins and winning the oil endgame

Another talk from TED.com:

Amory Lovins is a man I’ve never heard of before, but apparently he is a cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. In his talk he explains why he believes it is important to “Win the Oil Endgame” as he puts it in his book. He goes into how our dependence on oil negatively affects us and discusses how it makes a large monetary difference to conserve oil use. He uses a term called the “negawatt” meaning A measure of the avoided use or the conservation of a unit of energy, which is something he coined over 20 years ago. (In a cosmic stroke, I actually first saw this term in a science magazine called Seed. I hadn’t known that Amory Lovins coined the term before finding his talk on TED. I only just realized it when I googled negawatt for the definition for this post!) What I remember most about this talk is his reference to making automobiles lighter by using a carbon fiber construction instead of steel. He spoke of many different parts to the solution, yet this one stuck out at me. It’s not a new concept to me. There was a Nova special that featured Click and Clack (from NPR’s Car Talk) as hosts and was about the cars of the future. That special also mentioned carbon fiber construction. It’s compelling, but it still makes you wonder if the technology is there. And it makes me wonder, wow wouldn’t that be cool to be the person to figure out that technology to make it effectively and cost efficiently? Too bad I didn’t major in materials engineering.