Review

Hazel Henderson:

" in "Reinventing Fire," Amory Lovins and RMI are summarizing their case for shifting from digging and drilling to collecting our energy as nature does by photosynthesis and other chemical and thermal processes: from the daily photon shower arriving free from our sun. This book is meticulously researched, relying on their own scientific team as well as many outside studies. We agree that the tipping point for this energy transition is now and our Green Transition Scoreboard® corroborates RMI's findings: that harvesting the Sun's free energy and the huge efficiency savings in our wasteful economy require no new technology. By 2050, the report estimates that our US economy will have grown with no further oil, no coal, no nuclear energy and one third less natural gas. This transition, says RMI, will cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual while avoiding all the costs and uncounted externalities of our current unsustainable global economy.

In our Green Transition Scoreboard, we cite many computer models of this transition I described in "The Politics of the Solar Age" (reviewed by the NYTimes in 1981). They show that the transition requires only ramping up efficiency and production of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and ocean energy sources (including algae-based biofuels) by expanding demand, production and thus driving down their prices (Climate Solutions 2: Low Carbon Re-industrialization). We at GTS find that investing $1 trillion each year from 2010 until 2020 places humanity in the cleaner, greener, smarter Solar Age. Happily, our latest research totaling just private investments since 2007 reached $2.4 trillion worldwide.

Thus, we agree with RMI that the private sector is leading the way. We have been urging the world's pension funds and institutional investors with their $120 trillion AUM to shift at least 10% of their assets away from risky fossilized companies, hedge funds, high-frequency trading, speculating in commodity ETFs and shift "From Rigged Carbon Markets to Investing in Green Growth". Mercer International's report goes us one better and calls for a 40% shift (half for hedging climate risks and half for capitalizing on green investing).

While RMI downplays the role of governments, we see the public and private sectors as two sides of the same coin – obvious to all since the governments' bailed out global banks and financiers in 2007-8. They continue to "re-inject" money into this sector through QE1, QE2 and maybe even QE3 in the mistaken belief it would trickle down to Main Street.

We also call for phasing out producer and consumer subsidies to fossil fuels, ending the vast subsidies to nuclear power which in the USA and Australia is now more expensive than solar PV. We agree that cutting deficits in the USA by at least $380 billion, recommended by the Green Scissors 2011 report, could end many environmentally damaging, government-funded programs. We at Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) also go beyond GDP with our Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, using the "dashboard" model, pioneered with the Calvert Group since 2000 and regularly updated at calvert-henderson.com. We also cover all the new metrics now reforming markets by internalizing those externalities at Beyond GDP, following our work with the European Parliament in 2008. We favor Qualitative Growth as I outlined with physicist Fritjof Capra.

"Reinventing Fire" is an essential, in-depth summary of all the evidence of the great energy transition now under way. We recommended this book to the OECD's Green Growth report on the energy transition, on which we were invited to comment. We will promote this book as the perfect companion to our Green Transition Scoreboard. We think the transition is inevitable, a result of better science and technologies and a huge opportunity for a prosperous, fair, equitable, sustainable future for all." (http://seekingalpha.com/article/293982-book-review-reinventing-fire)

Reinventing Fire

Review

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