The Visionary

Nobody has a more varied and eccentric set of credentials as a climate crusader than Amory Lovins. A respected physicist and economist who co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982, Lovins has published twenty-nine books on energy and the environment, helped the semiconductor industry devise hyperefficient factories, and advised eighteen heads of state, including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. His top priority, however, is transforming the automobile. Thanks to America's love affair with the Hummer, average fuel efficiency is actually worse today than it was in 1980. "Transportation accounts for seventy percent of America's oil demands and generates a third of all carbon emissions," says Lovins, 57. "It is the most intractable part of the climate problem."

To prod Detroit to think cleaner, Lovins has designed a new kind of SUV: the Revolution. His concept car goes from zero to sixty in 8.3 seconds and gets 114 miles per gallon. Crafted from superstrength plastics, the Revolution weighs only 1,850 pounds -- less than half as much as a conventional car -- yet has more than five times the crash resistance. That makes it light enough to be driven by hydrogen fuel cells, which lack the oomph to power heavier cars with gas engines.

Lovins, the son of an inventor, attended Harvard and became an Oxford don at twenty-one. He has briefed automakers on the Revolution and is working with some to incorporate more lightweight plastics into their designs. His goal is to push American industry to double its fuel efficiency and find substitutes for oil -- a move that he projects would save $70 billion a year. "Using energy more efficiently doesn't just address the climate crisis, it offers an economic bonanza," Lovins says. "Why? Because saving fossil fuel is a lot cheaper than buying it."

Next: The Go-Between: Jonathan Lash

Back to Warriors and Heroes