Reinventing Fire
Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era is a 2011 book, by Amory B. Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute, that explores converting the United States to almost total reliance on renewable energy sources, such as solar energy and wind power. Lovins says that renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels and his analysis predicts further reductions in renewable energy prices.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
10mentions
7people
2013–2026years
30% recommend70% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Wood and plant burning requires a longer nuanced answer than the Hacker News format allows. Humanity must not cut forests or grow plants unnecessarily. If you must use wood to build a house -(there are better and cheaper materials in terms of energy and climate change enhancing emissions, see for examples Amory Lovins book Reinventing Fire or his lectures on Youtube) - then first grow those trees in a place that has no natural forest. And then do not burn the wood after you demolish the house. Do not use wood from forest, humans should let the forest manage itself.
Same with clearing the underbush of Meditaranian and hotter climate forest to prevent forest fires. If humanity had not managed those forest (grazing animals, building roads, harvesting) in the first place than there would have been no buildup of excess material that sustain wildfires past its natural rate.
- Alan mentions all the books in the talks and shows the front page. Sorry, it takes to much time right now to order, edit and prioritise the list of books for you. I'll try to append that to this thread later this week. You can contact me on morphle at ziggo dot nl and we can have an interactive session where I can shower you with critical thinking resources from Alan Kay, Marvin Minksy and a few others.
Book references:
Human Blindspots and “Bad Brains”:
Francis Bacon, “Novum Organum Scientia”
Daniel Kanneman, “Thinking: Fast and Slow”
Robert Meyer, Howard Kunreuthner, “The Ostrich Paradox”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Alfred Korzybski, “Science and Sanity”
YouTube: “How To Catch A Baboon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctol7JwpcuQ
Exemplary Practices and Perspectives:
Amory Lovins, “Reinventing Fire”
E.F. Schumaker, “Small Is Beautiful”
Christopher Alexander, “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”
from: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/Kay_How.pdf
http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp
https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/alan-kay-books
https://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysReadingList
https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/alan-kay-books
I know there must be lots more if you search online, there is even a HN post with a book list written by Alan himself.
I have gathered the books on these lists and all the video's of the talks in a 500 GB torrent. Maybe you can help organise it so we can publish it here?
Talks:
- The California state plan proposal has been getting discussed recently: "How to power California with wind, water and sun (Jacobson and Delucchi)" (http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2btow7/how_to...).
J&D's proposal for a US national wind, water, and sun energy system: (http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad11...) is one of the more complete such prosals around. See more links on their website:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susen...
Recently they've been providing proposals for each of the 50 states:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-5....
David McKay's Without the Hot Air (http://www.withouthotair.com/) is one of the few comparable efforts I'm aware of, though RMI/Amory Lovins Reinventing Fire (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781603585385-0) probably belongs in the mix.
Also being discussed on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/comments/2d8ptl/a_road...
(Disclaimer: I'm a moderator of that sub).
- What’s your advice for people who want to transition to working on projects to help fix the climate crisis?
Where would you start?
Curious, what bit are you working on to help fix this? Research as you’re doing a PhD?
Reading “Reinventing Fire” currently. So much needs to change, but it feels like there is zero political will to address this crisis.
- Amory Lovins made this case in Reinventing Fire a long time ago. I think people fail to see what is right there in front of them because:
1) they are stuck in old models of what is needed, baseload etc.
2) the energy sector is a trillion dollar business giving incumbents trillions of reasons to muddy the waters with made up issues (panels need to be replaced after 20 years etc)
But I think the revolution or evolution can't be stopped. Texas of all places is blowing up in solar installations. Money talks louder than ideology or opinions.
- Fighting climate change… what do you have in mind… what can folks in (soft) tech do?
I’m equally interested but lacking in imagination currently how software can have a bigger impact.
All the big impactful things are in hard tech, ie changing industrial processes, new / improved material design, renewable energy production, reducing energy waste or waste in general etc and planting tons and tons of trees at scale - best carbon capture and ecosystem restoration tech we have I think.
But for all that we need to have the political will, which is not sufficiently present at the moment. Too many counter forces preventing systems change. So how do you address that?
A book on my to read list is Reinventing Fire.
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