Lovins definitely provides an "appealing" message - you can use your energy and have it too. Unfortunately, the real world is governed by things like the laws of thermodynamics, physics and chemistry. The real world has summers, winters, rainy days, sunny days, still days, windy days, floods and droughts.

Lovins has been successfully preaching his message of "negawatts" for at least 30 years, ever since Foreign Affairs published Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken in its November 1977 issue. The article received attention in the New York Times and Lovins appeared before Congress to testify. In the intervening time since that article was published, Lovins has consulted for the government, major energy companies, and energy consumers like Wal-Mart. He has published a number of books and appeared on numerous TV interview programs. In other words, his message is "out there".

However, the world continues to increase its use of energy. We now burn more than 6.5 BILLION tons of coal each year (up from less than 4 billion in 1977). Oil and natural gas consumption are also up by similar amounts. Electricity use world wide has increased about twice as fast as the use of fossil fuels since 1977. (All can be supported with data available from the thousands of charts, graphs and spreadsheets published by the US Energy Information Agency at www.eia.doe.gov.)

The lure of negawatts is simply a vision or a mirage. It is not working because people want the convenience and comfort that come from using physics and chemistry to do work that would otherwise have to be done by them. As we dream of the world that Lovins describes, where all you need to do to have enough energy is to use less of it, we continue to fill our atmosphere with the deadly waste products of increased combustion.

There is a better way that takes a bit more work and study. We know how to produce massive quantities of reliable, low cost energy using a different physical technique called nuclear fission. That process is far more efficient - if you could power a car using fission, you could achieve real nirvana - the car would go about 760 Million miles on a "gallon" of fuel. (http://www.atomicinsights.com/FTROU/3-06-01.html) We cannot quite do that, but we can and do power cities with a million residents using about 3 kilograms of fuel each day. We also have ships and submarines that can operate for 30 years without refueling.

The very best thing about fission is that the by-products can be carefully retained and prevented from ever reaching the environment. For the most part, these by-products can be recycled into new fuel or other valuable products.

Unfortunately, Lovins and many of his friends do not like fission. I cannot explain why other than to point back to my comment about his activities over the years since his "no nukes, use negawatts instead" message became popular enough to get him employed as a consultant to energy companies, governments and other establishment firms.

Yes, I believe that Lovins income sources has something to do with his message about using natural gas and coal as bridge fuels to a utopia that will never come.