Amory Lovins and Bob Livingston Chat, 1985

LONG-LOST FOOTAGE RE-DISCOVERED

In 1985, I transformed into the proverbial fly on the wall as DP Mark Schulze set up his camera gear on the Holiday Inn patio. We were about to interview of Robert Livingston and Amory Lovins.  Finally, once the two gentlemen were settled, Mark began to roll the camera.

Wikipedia has some robust factoids about both Bob (who passed away in 2002) and Amory.

Bob Livingston

Robert Livingston, Photo from UCSD News

 

Robert Burr “Bob” Livingston (October 9, 1918 – April 26, 2002) was an American physician, neuroscientist, and social activist. He was born in 1918 in Boston. He completed his undergraduate studies (in 1940), medical degree (in 1944), and residency at Stanford University. As a Naval Reserve officer, Livingston served in Okinawa and earned a Bronze Star during World War II. His experience as a physician in a United States Navy hospital during the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lead him to a lifelong opposition to nuclear arms. He was co-founder and President of the San Diego chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. After the war he joined the Yale University college of medicine as a professor of physiology. He served on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles from 1952 to 1960. In other teaching appointments at Stanford and Harvard he also taught pathology, anatomy, and psychiatry. In the 1950s he served as physician to a Scripps Institution of Oceanography expedition. He was appointed Scientific Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. He advised James Humes, the navy pathologist who performed the autopsy on John F. Kennedy, and based on his personal experience and observations became a skeptic of the “Lone gunman theory“.

After his time at the National Institutes of Health, in 1964 Livingston founded the neuroscience department, the first of its kind in the world, at the newly built University of California, San Diego campus. He served as chairman of the department until 1970, as professor until 1989, and as professor emeritus until his death in 2002. His best known research was in the computer mapping and imaging of the human brain. His interest in the brain also extended to questions of cognition, consciousness, emotions, and spirituality. He was active in the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. In 1988 Livingston met and befriended the Dalai Lama, for whom he served as a science advisor. He died in 2002 in San Diego, California. Livingston was an avid mountain climbing and hiking friend of Robert S. McNamara.

Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins. Cropped from a photo by Steve Jurvetson

Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American physicist, environmental scientist, writer, and Chairman/Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades. He was named by Time magazine one of the World’s 100 most influential people in 2009.

Amory Lovins worked professionally as an environmentalist in the 1970s and since then as an analyst of a “soft energy path” for the United States and other nations. He has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. Lovins has also advocated a “negawatt revolution” arguing that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services. In the 1990s, his work with Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar.

Lovins does not see his energy ideas as green or left-wing, and he is an advocate of private enterprise and free market economics. He notes that Rupert Murdochhas made News Corporation carbon-neutral, with savings of millions of dollars. But, says Lovins, large institutions are becoming more “gridlocked and moribund”, and he supports the rise of “citizen organizations” around the world.

Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and won many awards. He has provided expert testimony in eight countries, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books. These books include Reinventing Fire, Winning the Oil Endgame, Small is Profitable, Brittle Power, and Natural Capitalism.

Now, nearly half a century later, the topic they discussed together, Energy, with a side helping of Nuclear Energy, is still at the top of the world’s priorities.  They even discuss the idea of solar panels on people’s rooftops.  When I located this long-lost clip on a VHS stuck on the shelf in the back of a closet, I decided to unearth it and share it with our readers.  If nothing else, it is a moment in time captured when a couple of cool dudes, Bob and Amory, got together to talk about what was on their minds.  As Jay Leno once opined, “You just can’t fake the ’80’s.”

Patty Mooney is a VP, Video Producer, Video Editor, Sound Technician, Teleprompter Operator and Voice Over at Award-Winning San Diego Video Production Company, Crystal Pyramid Productions.