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	Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America (Unabridged) by Thomas L. Friedman
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Product Details Binding Audio Download Manufacturer audible.com Publisher audible.com Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description Thomas L. Friedman’s no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future. Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy— which he calls “Geo-Greenism”—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure. As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted “green revolution” has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today. Book Description 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. Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria: Author One-to-One Fareed Zakaria: Your book is about two things, the climate crisis and also about an American crisis. Why do you link the two? Thomas Friedman: You're absolutely right--it is about two things. The book says, America has a problem and the world has a problem. The world's problem is that it's getting hot, flat and crowded and that convergence--that perfect storm--is driving a lot of negative trends. America's problem is that we've lost our way--we've lost our groove as a country. And the basic argument of the book is that we can solve our problem by taking the lead in solving the world's problem. Zakaria: Explain what you mean by 'hot, flat and crowded.' Friedman: There is a convergence of basically three large forces: one is global warming, which has been going on at a very slow pace since the industrial revolution; the second--what I call the flattening of the world--is a metaphor for the rise of middle-class citizens, from China to India to Brazil to Russia to Eastern Europe, who are beginning to consume like Americans. That's a blessing in so many ways--it's a blessing for global stability and for global growth. But it has enormous resource complications, if all these people--whom you've written about in your book, The Post American World--begin to consume like Americans. And lastly, global population growth simply refers to the steady growth of population in general, but at the same time the growth of more and more people able to live this middle-class lifestyle. Between now and 2020, the world's going to add another billion people. And their resource demands--at every level--are going to be enormous. I tell the story in the book how, if we give each one of the next billion people on the planet just one sixty-watt incandescent light bulb, what it will mean: the answer is that it will require about 20 new 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants. That's so they can each turn on just one light bulb! Zakaria: In my book I talk about the 'rise of the rest' and about the reality of how this rise of new powerful economic nations is completely changing the way the world works. Most everyone's efforts have been devoted to Kyoto-like solutions, with the idea of getting western countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But I grew to realize that the West was a sideshow. India and China will build hundreds of coal-fire power plants in the next ten years and the combined carbon dioxide emissions of those new plants alone are five times larger than the savings mandated by the Kyoto accords. What do you do with the Indias and Chinas of the world? Friedman: I think there are two approaches. There has to be more understanding of the basic unfairness they feel. They feel like we sat down, had the hors d'oeuvres, ate the entrée, pretty much finished off the dessert, invited them for tea and coffee and then said, 'Let's split the bill.' So I understand the big sense of unfairness--they feel that now that they have a chance to grow and reach with large numbers a whole new standard of living, we're basically telling them, 'Your growth, and all the emissions it would add, is threatening the world's climate.' At the same time, what I say to them--what I said to young Chinese most recently when I was just in China is this: Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, 'Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn.' And I say to them, 'Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better. In other words, I know this is unfair, but I am here to tell you that in a world that's hot, flat and crowded, ET--energy technology--is going to be as big an industry as IT--information technology. Maybe even bigger. And who claims that industry--whose country and whose companies dominate that industry--I think is going to enjoy more national security, more economic security, more economic growth, a healthier population, and greater global respect, for that matter, as well. So you can sit back and say, it's not fair that we have to compete in this new industry, that we should get to grow dirty for a while, or you can do what you did in telecommunications, and that is try to leap-frog us. And that's really what I'm saying to them: this is a great economic opportunity. The game is still open. I want my country to win it--I'm not sure it will. Zakaria: I'm struck by the point you make about energy technology. In my book I'm pretty optimistic about the United States. But the one area where I'm worried is actually ET. We do fantastically in biotech, we're doing fantastically in nanotechnology. But none of these new technologies have the kind of system-wide effect that information technology did. Energy does. If you want to find the next technological revolution you need to find an industry that transforms everything you do. Biotechnology affects one critical aspect of your day-to-day life, health, but not all of it. But energy--the consumption of energy--affects every human activity in the modern world. Now, my fear is that, of all the industries in the future, that's the one where we're not ahead of the pack. Are we going to run second in this race? Friedman: Well, I want to ask you that, Fareed. Why do you think we haven't led this industry, which itself has huge technological implications? We have all the secret sauce, all the technological prowess, to lead this industry. Why do you think this is the one area--and it's enormous, it's actually going to dwarf all the others--where we haven't been at the real cutting edge? Continue reading the Q&A between Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria 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 Friendman'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. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Of course, rousing a full-bellied nation, groggy from decades of energy overconsumption, is no small task. As the current election debate reminds us, the United States has proven inept at developing a serious energy strategy. Our approach, says one expert quoted by Friedman, is 'the sum of all lobbies'; we have energy politics rather than energy policy. In the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush ignored calls by Friedman and others for a 'USA Patriot Tax' of $1 per gallon on gasoline. Instead, the president offered tax cuts and urged us to shop. Rather than stimulating the economy to move toward fuel-efficient vehicles and renewable energy, we became more dependent on China to finance our deficit and Saudi Arabia to fill our gas tanks. Americans wound up paying even more for gas in 2008, but we enabled OPEC to be the tax collector instead of using the revenues ourselves. Friedman calls this a 'No Mullah Left Behind' policy and quotes former CIA director Jim Woolsey: 'We are funding the rope for the hanging of ourselves.' Friedman believes we need to become 'green hawks,' turning conservation and cleaner energy into a winning strategy in many different arenas, including the military. ('Nothing,' he writes, 'will make you a believer in distributed solar power faster than having responsibility for trucking fuel across Iraq.') We should stop defining our current era as 'post-Cold War,' he says, and see it as an 'Energy-Climate Era' marked by five major problems: growing demand for scarcer supplies, massive transfer of wealth to petrodictators, disruptive climate change, poor have-nots falling behind, and an accelerating loss of bio-diversity. A green strategy is not simply about generating electric power, it is a new way of generating national power. Incremental change will not be enough. The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times scoffs at the kind of magazine articles that list '205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth.' In the 1990s, global carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.1 percent annually, and many nations (not including the United States) signed the Kyoto Protocol to try to curb those emissions. But from 2000 to 2006, growth in CO2 emissions tripled to 3 percent per year. Friedman cites an estimate by Royal Dutch Shell that it typically takes 25 years for a new form of energy to capture 1 percent of the world market. Shell predicts that if we do things right, renewable energy will provide 30 percent of global needs by 2050, but fossil fuels will still provide 55 percent. Friedman says we need to do better than that. 'Carbon neutral' is not ambitious enough; companies and institutions should seek a 'carbon advantage' over rivals. This will require innovations in clean energy; greater energy efficiency (including the use of information technology to create smart grids and smart buildings); and a new ethic of conservation. Friedman argues that rather than costing too much, such initiatives can create investment opportunities, new jobs and global leadership for the U.S. economy. Here one wishes he had provided more evidence from some of the pettifogging academic economists. Friedman is skeptical of treaties, and he argues that 'a truly green America would be more valuable than fifty Kyoto Protocols. Emulation is always more effective than compulsion.' He makes a good case that 'outgreening' other countries would contribute to America's soft power as well as our hard power. 'We are still the city on the hill for many Chinese,' he notes, 'even though they hate what we've done at times at the top of the hill.' But the problem of China could overshadow what we do at home. In 2007, China surpassed the United States as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide. Chinese argue that on a per capita basis each of their citizens is responsible for only one-fifth the emissions of an American, and that developing countries should not have to cut back until they reach rich countries' CO2 levels. This is a formula for global disaster. As Friedman says, 'Mother Nature isn't into fair. All she knows is hard science and raw math.' China uses coal, a particularly CO2-intensive fuel, for 70 percent of its commercial energy supply, while coal accounts for a third of America's total energy. China builds more than one new coal-fired power plant each week. Coal is cheap and widely available in China, which is important as the country scrambles for energy resources to keep its many energy-intensive industries running. But Friedman does not deal with the issue of cleaner coal in China, and no amount of renewable energy in America will solve the problem. At the rate China is growing, a Chinese switch to renewables will come too late. What can the United States do about this security threat? The bombs, bullets and embargos of traditional security policy are irrelevant. A 2007 report from the International Energy Agency urged a cooperative approach to helping China and India become more energy efficient. In other words, to promote our own security, the United States and other rich countries may have to forge a partnership with China, India and others to develop a full range of creative ideas, technologies and policies to prevent dangerous climate change. This requires a reframing of what we think of as national security and a more inclusive strategy than we have had in the past. If we finally move in that direction, Friedman will deserve some of the credit. Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. 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. Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC Erratic climate change, ever-increasing global consumer demands, and an ever-increasing world population (hot, flat, and crowded) are the greatest challenges the world has to face in the twenty-first century. Thomas Friedman is not interested in sounding an alarm. He's calling to arms America's good old, though slightly dormant, entrepreneurial and inventive spirit. Narrator Oliver Wyman deftly reflects Friedman's intelligence, passion, and, perhaps most importantly, impartiality when discussing such hot-button issues as Middle Eastern petro politics, third-world deforestation, and China's skyrocketing demand for energy. Wyman's voice is at its brightest when calling for a new, out-of-the-box green patriotism, reflecting Friedman's belief that the United States can and should be the world's leader in finding the 'tools, systems, energy sources, and ethics' to create a world we can live in for centuries to come. B.P. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine 'At the intersection of leveled economic and technological access (flat) with an aggravated environment (hot), and a surging population (crowded), Friedman stands upon his pulpit as preacher, prophet, and promoter of a green revolution starting in the United States. He provides an exhaustive, impressive, and convincing argument about the need for the United States to transition to more sustainable systems of energy soon or else risk any possible chance of maintaining hegemony. His ability to identify and summarize succinctly the issues and controversies over resistance to a green revolution is matched by his clear and definitive solutions to these forthcoming problems. Oliver Wyman provides a congenial and gentle voice that works well with the text.... He navigates the quoted text of this book with a distinguishing voice that sometimes hints at personality traits not referred to in the text. Impressively, Wyman keeps his consistency of cadence and tone throughout the entire reading.'—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Praise for The World is Flat—winner of the 2006 Audie award for best nonfiction: “Narrator Oliver Wyman does a superb job...The audiobook technology that enables us to take in so much information while caught in traffic or scrubbing a pan is precisely the sort of handhold Friedman would urge us all to grasp, and with both hands.'—AudioFile “[This book’s] insight is true and deeply important.... The metaphor of a flat world, used by Friedman to describe the next phase of globalization, is ingenious.... [His method] works in making complicated ideas accessible.”—The New York Times Book Review “This book showcases Friedman’s gift for lucid dissections of abstruse economic phenomena, his teacher’s head, his preacher’s heart, his genius for trend-spotting.” —The Washington Post “No one today chronicles global shifts in simple and practical terms quite like Friedman. He plucks insights from his travels and the published press that can leave you spinning like a top.”—The Christian Science Monitor Thomas L. Friedman’s no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future. Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy— which he calls “Geo-Greenism”—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure. As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted “green revolution” has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today. Thomas L. Friedman, a world-renowned author and journalist, joined The New York Times in 1981 as a financial reporter specializing in OPEC- and oil-related news and later served as the chief diplomatic, chief White House, and international economics correspondents. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles reporting the Middle East conflict, the end of the cold war, U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, international economics, and the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. His foreign affairs column, which appears twice a week in the Times, is syndicated to seven hundred other newspapers worldwide. Friedman is the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (FSG, 1989), which won both the National Book Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in 1989 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly twelve months. From Beirut to Jerusalem has been published in more than twenty-seven languages, including Chinese and Japanese, and is now used as a basic textbook on the Middle East in many high schools and universities. Friedman also wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree (FSG, 1999), one of the best selling business books in 1999, and the winner of the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy. It is now available in twenty languages. His last book, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11, issued by FSG in 2002, consists of columns Friedman published about September 11 as well as a diary of his private experiences and reflections during his reporting on the post-September world as he traveled from Afghanistan to Israel to Europe to Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. In 2005, The World Is Flat was given the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and Friedman was named one of America's Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report. Friedman graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University with a degree in Mediterranean studies and received a master's degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and has been awarded honorary degrees from several U.S. universities. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Ann, and their two daughters. ONE Where Birds Don’t Fly 'German engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothing.' Advertising slogan used on a billboard in South Africa by Daimler to promote its Smart 'forfour' compact car In June 2004, I was visiting London with my daughter Orly, and one evening we went to see the play Billy Elliot at a theater near Victoria Station. During intermission, I was standing up, stretching my legs in the aisle next to my seat, when a stranger approached and asked me, “Are you Mr. Friedman?” When I nodded yes, he introduced himself: “My name is Emad Tinawi. I am a Syrian-American working for Booz Allen,' the consulting firm. Tinawi said that while he disagreed with some of the columns I had written, particularly on the Middle East, there was one column he especially liked and still kept. “Which one?” I asked with great curiosity. “The one called ‘Where Birds Don’t Fly,’' he said. For a moment, I was stumped. I remembered writing that headline, but I couldn’t remember the column or the dateline. Then he reminded me: It was about the newpost-9/11U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. For years, the U.S. consulate in Istanbul was headquartered in the Palazzo Corpi, a grand and distinctive old building in the heart of the city’s bustling business district, jammed between the bazaars, the domed mosques, and the jumble of Ottoman and modern architecture. Built in 1882, and bought by the U.S. government twenty-five years later, Palazzo Corpi was bordered on three sides by narrow streets and was thoroughly woven into the fabric of Istanbul life. It was an easy place for Turks to get a visa, to peruse the library, or to engage with an American diplomat. But as part of the general security upgrade for U.S. embassies and consulates in the post-9/11 world, it was decided to close the consulate at Palazzo Corpi, and in June 2003 a new U.S. consulate was opened in Istinye, an outlying district about twelve miles away from the center of the city. “The new 22-acre facilitynearly 15 times as big as the old consulatewas built on a solid rock hill,” a Federal Times article reported (April 25, 2005), adding that “State now requires buildings to have protective walls that are at least 100 feet away from embassies and consulates. Those walls and barriers also must protect against explosions and ramming attacks from vehicles, and they must be difficult to climb. Guard booths are placed at the perimeter of facilities, and windows and doors are bulletproof and resist forced entries. The new buildings are also strong enough to resist most earthquakes and bombs.” They are also strong enough to deter most visitors, friends, and allies. In fact, when I first set eyes on the new consulate in 2005, what struck me most was how much it looked like a maximum-security prisonwithout the charm. All that was missing was a moat filled with alligators and a sign that said in big red letters: “Attention! You are now approaching the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. Any sudden movements and you will be shot without warning. all visitors welcome.” They could have filmed the Turkish prison movie Midnight Express there. But here’s a hard truth: Some U.S. diplomats are probably alive today thanks to this fortress. Because on November 20, 2003, as President George W. Bush was in London meeting with then prime minister Tony Blair, and about six months after the new U.S. consulate in Istanbul had been opened, Turkish Muslim terrorists detonated truck bombs at the HSBC bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing thirty people, including Britain’s consul general, and wounding at least four hundred others. The bomb-ravaged British mission was just a short walk from the Palazzo Corpi. One of the terrorists captured after the attack reportedly told Turkish police that his group had wanted to blow up the new U.S. consulate, but when they checked out the facility in Istinye, they found it impregnable. A senior U.S. diplomat in Istanbul told me more of the story: According to Turkish security officials, the terrorist said the new U.S. consulate was so secure, “they don’t let birds fly” there. I never forgot that image: It was so well guarded they don’t even let birds fly there . . . (That point was reinforced on July 9, 2008, when Turkish police outside the consulate killed three terrorists apparently trying to breach its walls.) Tinawi and I swapped impressions about the corrosive impact such security restrictions were having on foreigners’ perceptions of America and on America’s perceptions of itself. As an Arab-American, he was clearly bothered by this, and he could tell from my column that I was too. Because a place where birds don’t fly is a place where people don’t mix, ideas don’t get sparked, friendships don’t get forged, stereotypes don’t get broken, collaboration doesn’t happen, trust doesn’t get built, and freedom doesn’t ring. That is not the kind of place we want America to be. That is not the kind of place we can afford America to be. An America living in a defensive crouch cannot fully tap the vast rivers of idealism, innovation, volunteerism, and philanthropy that still flow through our nation. And it cannot play the vital role it has long played for the rest of the worldas a beacon of hope and the country that can always be counted on to lead the world in response to whatever is the most important challenge of the day. We need that Americaand we need to be that America—more than ever today. This is a book about why. The core argument is very simple: America has a problem and the world has a problem. America’s problem is that it has lost its way in recent yearspartly because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have let build up over the last three decades, bad habits that have weakened our society’s ability and willingness to take on big challenges. The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable. In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change. How we address these interwoven global trends will determine a lot about the quality of life on earth in the twenty-first century. I am convinced that the best way for America to solve its big problem the best way for America to get its “groove” back is for us to take the lead in solving the world’s big problem. In a world that is getting hot, flat, and crowded, the task of creating the tools, systems, energy sources, and ethics that will allow the planet to grow in cleaner, more sustainable ways is going to be the biggest challenge of our lifetime. But this challenge is actually an opportunity for America. If we take it on, it will revive America at home, reconnect America abroad, and retool America for tomorrow. America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems. When we do just one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, we are greater than the sum of our partsmuch greater. But it’s not just an opportunity, either: it’s also a test. It’s a test of whether we are able and willing to lead. Whether you love us or hate us, whether you believe in American power or you don’t, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded has created a challenge so daunting that it is impossible to imagine a meaningful solution without America really stepping up. “We are either going to be losers or heroesthere’s no room anymore for anything in between,” says Rob Watson, CEO of EcoTech International and one of the best environmental minds in America. Yes, either we are going to rise to the level of leadership, innovation, and collaboration that is required, or everybody is going to losebig. Just coasting along and doing the same old things is not an option any longer. We need a whole new approach. As they say in Texas: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”The simple name for the new project I am proposing is “Code Green.” What “red” was to America in the 1950s and 1960sa symbol of the overarching Communist threat, the symbol that was used to mobilize our country to build up its military, its industrial base, its highways, its railroads, ports, and airports, its educational institutions, and its scientific capabilities to lead the world in defense of freedom we need 'green” to be for today’s America. Unfortunately, after 9/11, instead of replacing red with green, President George W. Bush replaced red with “Code Red” and all the other crazy colors of the Department of Homeland Security’s warning system. It’s time to scrap them all and move to Code Green. Of course, I am not calling for a return to anti-Communist witch hunts and McCarthyismjust to the seriousness and determination to build a society that can face the overarching threat of our day. For me, going Code Green means making America the World’s leader in innovating clean power and energy-efficiency systems and inspiring an ethic of conservation toward the natural world, which is increasingly imperiled. We’re going to need both massive breakthroughs in clean power and a deeper respect for the world’s forests, oceans, and biodiversity hot spots if we’re going to thrive ... Customers who bought this item also bought The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 The Post-American World The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism Outliers: The Story of Success Customer Reviews for: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America (Unabridged) Rating - DICTATOR FOR A DAY While I agree with some of the renewable energy issue, as an American, I have little trust of an individual that sees taking our personal liberties away for a day, see China for a Day chapter. This in an effort to "protect us" from ourselves. The last thing I need is the government, who can't even balance their own check book, tell me how to live or take my freedoms away for a day so they can push some agenda. While I'm not comparing the two, facisim ... Read More Rating - Hot, Flat and Crowded I can't get as excited about global warming as Friedman has. First half of book paints worse-case scenarios in my opinion and is very tiresome reading - very repetetive and overdone with metaphors. Solutions in latter half of book are interesting, but are they all possible or necessary? Am usually a big fan of Friedman's recent op-eds, so a bit disappointed with the book. Rating - 30% recycled content Haven't read more than the synopsis yet, but are we to believe Friedman's call for a "green revolution" when it's published on 70% new paper, and only 30% recycled material? That's a revolution? When Friedman apologizes for his part in cheerleading for the waste of over a trillion dollars in Iraq, money which would be enough to make all the renewable fuel we would ever need, then he can say he's serious. Sorry, Tom, ... Read More Rating - Deeply Intriguing Ideas Buried by Breezy Style Thomas Friedman's writing is new to me, and from the glowing reviews of this book I expected a little bit more. I'm a climate change professional and one of those "revolutionary bureaucrats" that he praises in his book for doing the real work in protecting human health and the environment (thank you, Mr. Friedman), and I agree with 95 percent of his ideas and solutions - especially placing the true price of dirty fuel back onto the consumer (only then will ... Read More see more reviews See all books by author Thomas L. Friedman

Books : Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America (Unabridged)