The road we were told not to take
This article reflects on the 50th anniversary of Amory Lovins' influential essay 'Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?' and its role in shifting the environmental movement away from nuclear power. The author argues that the movement's rejection of nuclear energy was based on prejudice rather than objective safety or economic concerns.
Why it matters
It highlights the historical roots of the modern climate movement's energy policy and challenges the long-standing environmental opposition to nuclear power.
Happy 50th anniversary to “certainly one of the most important things we have published …”
The quote from David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, in November 1976, is from his introduction to an essay by a future Roaring Fork Valley resident. Brower noted that nobody had won the Peace Prize that fall and offered a theory: The Nobel people “had not yet seen what Amory Lovins has to say.”
The essay, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” was published in Foreign Affairs in October 1976 by a 28-year-old who went on to grow bananas in Old Snowmass and found the Rocky Mountain Institute, now RMI, with revenue over $170 million a year.
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