A cure for oil addicts

Amory B. Lovins talks big. He proposes to wean America off oil by the 2040s, touts ultralight cars and tells some of the most powerful corporate executives in the world, like those at Wal-Mart and Texas Instruments, how to behave more efficiently. But perhaps a former Oxford don — one who built a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in his basement during high school, anticipated global warming in 1976 and lives in a house that can run on the same amount of energy as a conventional light bulb — is allowed to be bold. In the first of a series of conversations with thinkers and executives about the future of energy, Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria spoke to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s co-founder and chairman to see how this optimist makes sense of the world’s energy woes.
Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: President Bush says we are addicted to oil. If that is the case, is there a cure?

LOVINS: There is a cure, and it is painless and profitable. In 2004, my team prepared for the Pentagon a detailed road map for getting the U.S. completely off oil by the 2040s, led by businesses for profit. Half the oil can be saved by redoubling the efficiency of using it, already doubled since 1975. The other half of the oil can be displaced by a mixture of saved natural gas and advanced biofuels. We would end up doing all the things we now do with oil at only a quarter of the cost and with uncompromised performance and improved safety.

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