Humorist and alternative energy pioneer Robert Danziger was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his hilarious memoir about his life in the world of alternative energy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence.
The author finds the humor in such widely diverse places as Cal-Tech, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), and of course in his own business ventures in the alternative energy field. A true renaissance man, the author has enjoyed more careers, and indulged in more laughter, than many people would experience in two lifetimes.
Thanks to Robert Danziger for his comprehensive and informative answers.
What was the background to writing this book A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence?
Robert Danziger: At the gym a couple of years ago a young mother was supervising her two kids, five and eight years old. We struck up a conversation and she told me that she doesn’t let her kids watch the news anymore because the energy and environmental stories had given them repeated nightmares. Partisanship and the escalation of catastrophic rhetoric threatened the sense of security and safety she wants for her children.
My career has been inventing and developing solutions. I am fundamentally optimistic about new technology and our ability to respond to crisis. Scaring people doesn’t work and breeds resentment. I don’t want to be part of scaring kids to accomplish something.
The conversation with that young mother convinced me to take a year or so to listen to people from a broad range of ages, politics, and beliefs to try to find out what people agreed on, if anything. I found three things all of them, at least in these groups, agreed on without exception: people like to laugh; like music; and want energy independence and a clean environment when they are coupled with prosperity.
Why did you choose to use humor in a book about alternative energy?
Robert Danziger: I love to tell jokes and stories with friends. I come from a family that loves to laugh and find the funny bits in every day life. When I came home from a business trip my wife, mother or sister would often ask, “What funny things happened?” Often the funny stories were told before they asked if I was OK, or was the trip successful. A good laugh preceded the meat.
Over the years I accumulated notes on hundreds of stories, jokes or situations that I found particularly funny. I started trying the material out on the young mother I referred to earlier, and many of the people I’d talked to in the previous year. No matter how different their political or other views were, they all liked the material. They all laughed. It became one of the most fun and rewarding projects I’d ever worked on.
I started systematically going through my years of notes and picked out 50 or so stories to write about. Then an interesting thing happened. My wife is a writer and I watched her go through dozens of drafts on her books. Whatever it took to get it right, that’s what she’d do. I was one of those people who lost the plot after three or so drafts, unlike music which I could re-do hundreds of times and never tire of. Humor, it turned out, was like music for me. I could do countless drafts without ever getting tired of the material. I realized I had a real book on my hands.
Shortly after this I gave a speech at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I had my first energy job, and reviewed what predictions of the future we’d made had been right, and what was missed. We got some things right – the hybrid car, underground gas, and energy prices, but we’d also missed some funny things 30 year ago for a super high-tech place like JPL – the personal computer, the web and cell phones.
I gave the talk in Von Karman Auditorium. A replica of the Voyager spacecraft is on my right, and Cassini on my left. At the foot of the stage stairs was the “Murmurs of Earth” display about the music, voices, pictures and other things attached to the Voyager –sort of a time capsule, interstellar style. The sound track starts with 55 world leaders saying hello in their native languages. Can you imagine that poor alien trying to figure that out? And then right in the middle of all these languages someone says, in English, “Hellooo Extraterrestrials!!!.” It makes me laugh just thinking about it.
And that’s the story that fit all the pieces together for me and led to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence.
Is there a problem within the alternative energy field, of too much rhetoric on both sides, and not enough creative thinking?
Robert Danziger: Yes. A thousand times, yes.
To be fair, there is actually lots of creative thinking but it is drowned out by the rhetoric. And policies or technologies that should have been thrown out long ago, instead crowd out some good stuff that could blossom.
Many of us “ghosts of alternative energy past” feel like we’ve been fighting the battle of 1973 over and over again. Maybe we’re the groundhogs of energy past.
Even if we’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing for the last 100 years or so, we can do it much better, and the escalation of rhetoric and hyperbole is not helpful.
You have been in the business of alternative energy, what were some of the ups and downs that you experienced?
Robert Danziger: I’m a sort of proud parent of the alternative energy industry. I’m proud of my family although it misbehaves from time-to-time. But it’s growing up and I am optimistic.
For example, in the early years of the electric and hybrid vehicle program we used to tell each other that if you’re looking for the electric car, look for the van it came in and it won’t be far away.
It’s not like that any more. Electric and hybrid cars to be sold by Chevy and other car makers by 2011 will go hundreds of miles.
I think a crucial moment occurred when we installed a pollution control device we’d invented for our power plant and for a long time we were at zero emissions for the stuff that causes smog. An old hand from the power business, 40 years with General Electric was there when it happened. He looked at me and said, “I never thought this would happen.” We were shaken and thrilled. We saw the future together at that moment.
The worst part of being at the absolute forefront of environmental stuff is that when you lose – and you lose more than you win – real people, often kids, are really hurt. When energy prices go sky-high real people are really hurt when businesses can’t afford the costs, close their doors and lay people off - sometimes entire towns. Those are tough situations to deal with.
Robert Danziger (photo left)
You had some important successes in the alternative energy field. What were they?
Robert Danziger: The most important thing I was part of was the birth of the alternative energy industry in the United States and around the world. One of perhaps 100 people who could make similar claims, the alternative energy industry was spawned in the late 70’s when, for the first time, solar, wind, cogeneration, synfuels and other new technologies were allowed to compete on a level playing field with conventional systems. Since that time over 12 billion barrels of oil have been conserved and 26 billion tons of greenhouse gases eliminated.
I call these 100 people the “ghosts of alternative energy past” because, like the wildcatters of the oil world, we did things in ways the current alternatives industry doesn’t understand or appreciate. We often feel like the old guy standing in the corner grumbling as the new kids make their share of avoidable mistakes and silliness. It’s the way it should be, and we know it, but it’s weird being a patronized leftover from a bygone era.
I hesitate to use the word pioneer because at energy conferences these days it seems that every other person is introduced as a “pioneer.” The term is overused and has little meaning anymore. I prefer “ghost.”
While what we did just slowed the rate of increase over that time, it nevertheless is the largest energy conservation and pollution reduction program in history, and by a wide margin. It is an example of how to invent, make and sell new energy technology so that it takes hold across the entire world. On a personal level I can tell you that I sleep very well knowing I cleaned up after my own mess, just like Mom told us to.
One of the unique ways we did this was to take the jet engine like on a 747 and make utility power with it burning natural gas because jet engines are much more efficient and easy to maintain than the old utility plants. We ran them at takeoff speed more than 95% of each year because you can push them on the ground in ways you would never do in the air. We actually made a profit selling clean energy cheaper than coal while eliminating carbon monoxide and other smog-producing emissions. We met the standard of energy independence (we used domestic natural gas), clean (on many days the air coming out of the plant was cleaner than the air going in), and prosperous (we sold the cheapest power around).
You were with JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CalTech. They sound like very serious places to study and work. What humor did you find in the world of rockets and outer space exploration?
Robert Danziger: Laughter was a big part of JPL. Which is good because smart people sometimes dig themselves into holes no sensible person would have stepped into. The smartest people do the stupidest things – that’s how I know I’m a genius.
I had an office mate, Rich Caputo, who used to work in his polka dot boxer shorts eating peanut butter with a serving spoon. He wrote the speeches for the director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The typists would walk into our room backwards to avoid seeing him in his knickers, never mind the peanut butter.
He’s also the only person I know to have actually re-named a planet. True story – it was the planet Uranus.
Here’s an excerpt from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence:
Three months later, JPL had just successfully flown the Voyager spacecraft by Jupiter, and it was on its way to Saturn. Congress had that day authorized JPL to continue the Voyager mission for several more years. The new authorization was for something called the “Grand Tour,” in which the spacecraft would travel past Uranus and Neptune before flying out of our solar system into interstellar space. This is what Rich and his cohorts were dreaming of when they bootlegged the nuclear battery [note – The Voyager battery was specified to last only the time needed to get to Saturn. Rich and his cohorts bootlegged much more capacity into the battery and it is operating today – over 30 years later]. Man’s first attempt to leave our solar system and communicate beyond it was made possible by not following orders. So American.
Bruce Murray, JPL’s director, was worried about the press conference happening in the next hour, with live hookups to dozens of countries. He showed up at our door and said, “Rich, I can’t go on television and tell five hundred million people that we’re flying to Uranus [pronounced ‘yer anus’]. What do I do?!” Rich, with a sandwich’s worth of peanut butter in his mouth, answered, “Call it Uranus [pronounced ‘urine us’].” Murray exclaimed, “That’s a great idea; that’s exactly what I’ll do!” And that’s what he did.
That night on NBC’s national news broadcast, the sonorous anchor, Tom Brokaw, announced at the end of the program that NASA/JPL was flying to “urine us”; then he looked in the camera and cracked up.
You invented something called Sunlaw, What was Sunlaw, and how did you find the lighter side there?
Robert Danziger: Sunlaw was a company I started in 1980 to research, develop, demonstrate and commercialize new energy and environmental technology. Sunlaw ran until 2005.
The name Sunlaw came from the password to the first energy database on Arapnet – the predecessor to the world wide web. I got a license plate that said Sunlaw on it and when I started the company a couple of years later I named it after the license plate.
I thought a woman at Franklin Research Institute in Philadelphia had invented the term Sunlaw. Some years later I was travelling through Scotland and ran into the Sunlaws House Hotel that had been operating since the early 1500’s. It’s now called the Roxburghe Hotel.
Finding the funny at Sunlaw was easy. When a CEO like me likes to tell funny stories it encourages everyone to do the same. The UPS delivery guy comes with a joke, or the funny story about the kid wailing in the seat next to you on that 12 hour flight from Berlin. Our accountant once told us about flying from Sydney, Australia to London, England and the person sitting next to him died early in the flight. The flight attendant asked our accountant if it would be OK to just strap the dead guy into the seat for the duration of the flight saying, “Don’t worry, you can have his dessert.”
But seriously, having been a musician and artist before I started Sunlaw, to me Sunlaw was a kind of sculpture and a confident laughter spilling from the rooms was an important part of the concept of Sunlaw.
Your book also contains many stories about music and the music industry. How did music creep into a humorous book about green technology?
Robert Danziger: I was a wannabe studio bass player starting when I was 18, didn’t go to undergraduate school (more or less), but eventually passed the College Equivalency Exam and worked my way through Whittier Law School doing recording sessions and some computer work. I went to work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory that was, at the time, recording the sounds of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. They sent me all over the world, and I bought a small synthesizer/sampler that I could play in my hotel rooms or plane seats.
Then a few years later I did a sound track for a company video on building the first two modern cogeneration power plants in the United States. These were new alternative energy plants I had helped invent, using development tools I’d also helped invent, and which became the best, safest, and cleanest operating power plants in history
Unbeknownst to me the producer entered the film to the New York Film Festival, lightning struck and I won the Gold Medal for Best Original Music. Some very famous composers like John Williams and Elmer Bernstein were also nominated, so when the MC announced, “And the winner of the Gold Medal for Best Original Music is Robert Danziger for Sunlaw Cogeneration,” the entire audience – and I am not making this up – looked up as one and said, “Who?”
What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone studying alternative energy?
Robert Danziger: Study energy history. All of it from about 1850 on. Not just the alternatives, because there are many successful examples in how existing technologies and policies got to where they are today. The oil wildcatters of 100 years ago are very similar to the wind, solar and cogeneration pioneers of the 1970’s and 80’s.
Future technologies like the electric and hybrid car might need similar thinking to wildly exceed expectations – something just about everyone hopes for. At a recent conference over half the attendees had been in the business less than 2 years. Most people in the energy business do not learn from the past – it will give you a huge advantage. Check out www.BobDanziger.com. There are pages devoted to energy and energy history. There is also a virtual storefront that has links to some of the books I recommend reading to get a full picture.
At the risk of adding a second piece of advice to a question that asked for one – living well is the best revenge. Do something great and enjoy the fruits.
What is next for Robert Danziger?
Robert Danziger: June 4, 2010 the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California is hosting a book launch for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence. The National Steinbeck Center is also currently hosting “Salinas Chinatown,” focusing on the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Mexican communities that lived side-by-side there. Salinas Chinatown is where John Steinbeck spent much of his time and modeled many of his characters on people who lived there.
I did a music and sound composition called “Steinbeck’s Chinatown” for the Exhibition. The Exhibition runs to the fourth of July. I am really happy to be launching A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence with the sound part of my life also on display, and at the home of my favorite author.
I’m also enjoying my two new websites. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence is supported and expanded by www.EnergyLaughs.com’s non-partisan energy, environmental and music humor. Also, www.BobDanziger.com covers all of my energy, music and other interests, has a section on energy history, and has a virtual storefront for links to the books that might provide background for people interested in this area and the other stuff I’ve done.
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My book review of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Energy Independence by Robert Danziger.
