Thomas L. Friedman, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America"

Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked—how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things—unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.

This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time—nation-building in America—by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation’s greatest natural resources.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge—and the promise—of the future.

From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World Is Flat) is still an unrepentant guru of globalism, despite the looming economic crisis attributable, in Friedman's view, to the U.S. having become a "subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity." Friedman covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the "most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation…. There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit." While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a "floor price for crude oil or gasoline," and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: "America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble." To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to "outgreen" China, modeled on Kennedy's proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of "petrodicatorship" and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman's earlier books.

From Bookmarks Magazine
It’s hard not to admire Thomas Friedman’s reporting, even if it sometimes feels like a sales pitch. That’s why those who agree with Friedman’s analysis were excited about this book: it may not be the best volume available on the subject, but it will encourage millions of people to think about the central role climate change should play in the national discourse. But Bjøorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, wrote that Friedman exaggerates the impact of global warming, uses random research to support his argument, and completely fails to take economics into account when he proposes solutions. Eric Fisher, on the other hand, was so annoyed with Friedman’s drastic tone and predilection for coining sociological “laws” that his review skirted Friedman’s argument and mocked its form, which may represent the reaction of some of those seeking a more sophisticated take on this timely subject.

From Booklist
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Friedman mapped the level economic playing field created by digital technology and global free-market capitalism in The World Is Flat (2005). He now adds two crucial elements to his galvanizing analysis of the state of the world: climate change and the population explosion. We’re trapped in a catastrophic vicious circle: burning fossil fuels accelerates global warming as the human population increases and the global economy grows, so, too, does oil consumption. Add the malevolence of mega-rich “petrodictatorships” and America’s precipitous decline, and the need for change is urgent. Backed by flotillas of facts and observations gathered on his investigative journeys to the Middle East, China, India, and beyond, Friedman is lashing in his critique of America’s failure to face energy and climate realities. Yet his belief in America’s capacity for innovation inspires his call for “Code Green,” a concerted effort to take the lead in developing “clean power and energy-efficiency systems” and preserving the natural world. Fluent in business, politics, and science, Friedman cogently explains the complex challenges we face, reminds us of our adaptability, and defines environmentalism as the key to peace and democracy. Friedman’s big, passionate, and solidly specific ecological primer, social manifesto, and realistic plan for a green revolution aimed at restoring America’s greatness and securing a sustainable future should serve as a playbook for innovators and civic leaders.

Contents

Part I: Where We Are
 1 Where Birds Don't Fly
 2 Today's Date: 1 E.C.E. Today's Weather: Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Part II: How We Got Here
 3 Our Carbon Copies (or, Too Many Americans) : Energy and Resource Supply and Demand
 4 Fill 'Er Up with Dictators: Petropolitics
 5 Global Weirding: Climate Change
 6 The Age of Noah: Biodiversity
 7 Energy Poverty
 8 Green Is the New Red, White, and Blue

Part III: How We Move Forward
 9 205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth
 10 The Energy Internet: When IT Meets ET
 11 The Stone Age Didn't End Because We Ran Out of Stones
 12 If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green
 13 A Million Noahs, a Million Arks
 14 Outgreening al-Qaeda (or, Buy One, Get Four Free)

Part IV: China
 15 Can Red China Become Green China?

Part V: America
 16 China for a Day (but Not for Two)
 17 A Democratic China, or a Banana Republic?

Acknowledgments
Index

Tags: qWorldPolitics, qEnergy, qEnvironment, qEconomics, qCurrentAffairs, qScience

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