Amory works directly with defense and industry in an advisory capacity. His work centers around efficiency and multi-targeted energy solutions – or solving many problems at once by grouping and solving them together. There’s a story he tells about a main support beam in his house, which he designed, that has 11 or 12 functions. He lives in the Colorado mountains at around 8,000 feet, grows bananas and coffee inside his house, and lives off almost entirely renewable energy.

Here’s a link to his house.

The fact he’s into killing as many birds as possible with one stone is a main reason I’d like to hear his thoughts on the totality of our issues – like plastic pollution and the general toxification of the environment, for two of many examples.
Some people might be turned off by the luxury of his house in our time of dwindling resources, but as a design architect, his house embodies the principles he applies to architectural/industrial design. He lives “proof of concept”.

A summary of his energy plan can be found in this TED talk (his delivery can seem a little contrived at times, and there’s a lot of quick summary data, but he’s more interesting in interviews).

I know Paul Ehrlich is critical of corporations, as am I. I’ve referred to them as “functionally psychopathic” for years before I heard Paul speak this way. Amory, however, is focusing on using the economic infrastructure we have, since we can’t just change it overnight – especially given the dire lack of time. As such, he takes a business leadership approach, though he is critical of corporate socialism, lobbying interference, and the resulting lack of real, innovative competition.

You can see some of these thoughts in this Charlie Rose interview.

You can see in this video that he’s careful not to burn bridges. He can’t afford to do this working as he does directly with defense and industry. And yet he still provides sensible criticism.

And for fun, here’s an excellent short interview with Amory and Janine Benyus on the potential of biomimicry in design. Worth watching to hear about the biomimicry engineering database:

I also want to add that MAHB’s consideration of Amory is some of the best news I’ve heard in a while. Even if this goes nowhere, just getting some feedback has lowered my existential despair somewhat.

Thank you.

Wow – thank you so much! I hope others can feel a fraction of the excitement that I do over this. I hope something fruitful comes of it. This also motivates me in my own efforts. I’m starting a club at college to discuss issues of “catastrophic and existential import”, with climate change being a main focus. The internet is revealing the power of networks right here.