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

HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED: WHY WE NEED A GREEN REVOLUTION - AND HOW IT CAN RENEW AMERICA by Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008, 438 pp. ISBN: 978-0-374-16685-4 Let us mention our bias right from the start: We like Thomas Friedman's ideas and writing. Both of us read his newspaper columns often and usually agree with his arguments. And both of us find this book to be his best yet. It is full of insightful perspectives: "We have much more to win than just the war on terror. We have so much more to contribute." (p. 13) In this book, Friedman provides a thorough analysis of pressing worldwide issues from a variety of viewpoints - economic, religious, political, cultural, governmental, industrial, environmental, and technical. Of course, this review will concentrate on the last two perspectives (environmental and technical), which constitute the bulk of the book. In our professional work, both of us are concerned with the effects of science and technology on public policy. Friedman always takes a very broad, multidisciplinary view of important topics and issues, and he understands the significant role of technology in shaping the events of the modern world even though he is not a technological expert. Friedman's overall point is that the United States is a world leader that has the opportunity to solve the world's three greatest challenges alluded to in the book's title: global warming and related environmental issues - HOT, technology's contribution to the rapid rise of a connected middle classes with rising expectations - FLAT, and the rapid human population growth - CROWDED. His conclusion is simple but compelling: "In a world that is getting hot, flat, and crowded, the task of creating tools, systems, energy sources, and ethics that allow the planet to grow in cleaner, more sustainable ways is going to be the biggest challenge of our lifetime." (pp. 5- 6) The related and resulting problems and issues, discussed in detail, are rooted in the multivariate topics of energy supply and demand, petropolitics, climate change, energy poverty, and biodiversity loss. To focus on the critical nature of these issues, Friedman actually proposes that 1 January 2000 be the first day of a new era called the "Energy-Climate Era" and that the new efforts to fix these problems be called "Code Green". To explain the critical pressures of population growth on the future of the planet, Friedman notes that CIA "analysts now believe the most worrying trend in the world is not terrorism but demographics." (p. 29) Of course, it is natural to consider these massive problems to be intimidating, daunting, and even impossible, and Friedman does not sugarcoat their magnitude or the consequences of failure. …