Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0

"When the Soviet Union chucked Sputnik into space in 1957, it galvanized America to come from behind and win the space race. The federal government opened its checkbook to finance an array of projects. Students shifted to new subjects like astronautical engineering and Russian studies to help the United States understand and eclipse the Soviet Union. The moon shot inspired a patriotic nation and produced useful commercial technologies along the way. The space race was expensive, but it worked. Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment. His breezy tour of America’s energy policy documents a nation that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels . . . Mr. Friedman’s voice is compelling and will be widely heard . . . Mr. Friedman’s strength is his diagnosis of our energy and environmental nightmares . . . The most intriguing chapter in Mr. Friedman’s book is his last, which poses the toughest challenge. Can America be like China, where a visionary government can impose a new direction on the country in the face of national emergency? Or will America devolve into a country that is so mired in red tape and local opposition that it builds absolutely nothing anywhere, near anything? Societies like that get stuck because they can’t embrace new technologies, like the cherished wind turbines and the power lines needed to carry their current . . . Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman’s common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide. The Sputnik is heading into orbit, thanks to high energy prices, growing fear of the changing climate and pleas like Mr. Friedman’s. But whether we as a nation—and with us, the world—are really prepared to do anything to solve the problem is still in doubt."—David Victor, The New York Times

“The form of Hot, Flat, and Crowded is trademark Friedman: a series of arguments, often distilled into mnemonic formulations, some snappier than others—it’s not A.D. 2008, but ‘1 E.C.E.,’ the first year of the ‘Energy-Climate Era’— all based on extensive, far-flung reporting, most of it consisting of interviews with experts, professors and, of course, C.E.O.s . . . What will appeal to can-do business types is that Friedman’s book does not dwell, as, say, Gore’s movie did, on describing the problem, but concentrates most on sketching possible solutions. It is in these passages that Friedman’s argument really takes off, allowing him to give vent to his enthusiasm and unabashed idealism . . . Friedman knows what is to be done. The United States needs to set an example for the world to follow, by starting over and constructing an entirely new Clean Energy System, one that will send ‘clean electrons’ into its homes, offices and cars—generated not by dirty old oil or coal, but by solar, wind and nuclear power—and that will use many fewer of those electrons, thanks to greater efficiency. In the book’s most arresting passage, Friedman plays futurist and looks ahead—to ‘20 E.C.E.’—imagining a world where an Energy Internet puts each one of your home appliances in touch with the power company, drawing out only the minimal power it needs to function and at the cheapest, off-peak times. Even your car, by now a plug-in hybrid that gets the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon, can charge its battery with solar power, which it then sells back to the grid . . . [Hot, Flat, and Crowded] is grounded in detailed research and repeatedly hits its target. It contains some killer facts—the American pet food industry spends more on research and development than the country’s power companies; Ronald Reagan stripped from the White House the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed as a symbolic step toward energy independence. Above all, it is fundamentally right on the biggest question of our age. If Friedman’s profile and verve take his message where it needs to be heard, into the boardrooms of America and beyond, that can only be good—for all our sakes.”—Jonathan Freedland, The New York Times Book Review

"We need Tom Friedman. The peripatetic columnist has made himself a major interpreter of the confusing world we inhabit. He travels to the farthest reaches, interviews everyone from peasants to chief executives and expresses big ideas in clear and memorable prose . . . Friedman gets the big issues right."—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Washington Post

"Hot, Flat, and Crowded is a compelling manifesto that deserves a wide reading, especially by members of Congress and candidates for president."—Bill Williams, The Boston Globe

"The headline of Thomas Friedman's column in this morning's New York Times reads, 'How to Make America Stupid.' Friedman is reacting to Rudy Giuliani's rallying cry at the Republican National Convention: 'Drill, baby, drill!' 'Why would Republicans,' he writes in what we might call classic Friedman-ese, a tone best accompanied by beating the forehead with one's open palm, 'the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century-technology—fossil fuels—rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology—renewable energy?' This is also the tone of Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, a book so combustible it makes a reader want to skip the palm of the hand altogether and bang the offending forehead against the nearest power line."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"Hot, Flat, and Crowded is an impassioned plea for consumers, businesses and politicians to wake up to both perils and opportunities presented by global warming and the emerging resource-constrained world."—Daniel Gross, Newsweek

"Reading New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s latest book, it’s hard to know how to describe him. A genial Jeremiah, perhaps? Or maybe Thomas Malthus with a clipboard and a 10-point plan for avoiding global catastrophe? As a professional opiner, Friedman is unusual. He’s not your typical journalistic chin-stroker, content to gin up a few deep thoughts before knocking out 800 words twice a week. From world capitals to remote villages, Friedman travels around the world, interviewing world leaders, business dynamos, and ground-breaking innovators. (It helps to have a New York Times expense account, I suppose.) And he does it with an enthusiastic curiosity that’s infectious. He comes across as an intellectual who’s also down-to-earth. Plus, there are those three Pulitzer Prizes he’s won for his reporting and writing . . . In Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America, Friedman brings it all together, adding in the inexorable growth in world population and consumption because much of the rest of the world is becoming more like the US in levels of wealth and therefore has the ability to buy stuff that depletes natural resources, creates greenhouse gases, and ends up in landfills . . . Friedman loves lists, and he loves phrasemaking. We have now entered the 'Energy-Climate Era' or 'E.C.E.' We need a 'Code Green' revolution in which America leads the way in innovative development of clean energy and 'an ethic of conservation toward the natural world.' Antidemocratic leaders whose coffers swell because of Americans’ appetite for oil he calls 'petrodictators.' This is gimmicky, but useful. And lists: 'Three broad trends' in America today. Five key problems 'that a hot, flat, and crowded world is dramatically intensifying.' 'Four fundamental ways' in which the nation’s oil addiction is changing the international system. That’s OK, too. Lists help organize thought and form understanding . . . He also writes excellent tutorial chapters on climate change, biodiversity, and 'energy poverty' in Africa and other parts of the developing world . . . This is not a book designed to cheer us up but to get us off our backsides. And Friedman doesn’t mean just changing light bulbs and installing low-flow toilets. Saving the world will be a lot harder than that. But the tone and the innovative ideas reviewed here leave me optimistic and energized. And certainly with a better understanding of the connections between energy, the environment, the economy, and national security."—Brad Knickerbocker, The Christian Science Monitor

"After three Pulitzer Prizes, four best-selling books and a couple of decades as a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman has his role down pat. Mixing fact-heavy reporting with a conversational tone, he produces cogent analyses of the most important developments of our time. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, his newest book, Friedman crafts a timely manifesto from separate intellectual strands on energy, the environment and geopolitics. His main argument: the biggest challenges confronting the U.S.—a debilitating dependence upon foreign sources of carbon-based energy and a battered image abroad—actually represent an enormous opportunity . . . Hot, Flat and Crowded is an intelligent book intelligently argued . . . A convincing case for the green revolution required to rescue us from an unsustainable course."—David J. Lynch, USA Today

"For better or worse, few journalists fashion neologisms with the zest of New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. In Hot, Flat, And Crowded, his new book about globalization and environmentalism, he puts these word-coinage skills on grand display. For Friedman, we're not living in 2008 A.D. or even 2008 C.E.—we've jumped onto a new timeline, the 'Energy-Climate Era,' and today's date falls in the year '1 E.C.E.' Friedman sums up his philosophy for 21st-century American energy policy, which he explores here in near-heroic detail and scope, using an equation that he offers with 'tongue only slightly in cheek' . . . [Friedman] has an uncanny ability to assume accurately what a knowledgeable reader probably already knows about any given subject. Moreover, with three Pulitzers on his shelf and 13 years of Times columns in his portfolio, he knows how to craft a persuasive argument . . . Hot, Flat, And Crowded skillfully weaves testimonies from both gung-ho 'green' pioneers—folks who want nothing more than a platform from which to tout their oft-ingenious innovations—and from dedicated scientists whose Chicken Little scenarios receive ample and deserved elucidation and validation. Friedman is at his best when he brings K Street to Main Street, explaining how governmental arcana—price signals, regulatory commissions, agricultural subsidies—quickly metastasize to affect everything from consumer and corporate bank accounts to the health of children's lungs and our ecosystem's biodiversity. For Friedman, America's need for—and Washington's promotion of—a 'green revolution' should lead, like the Space Race of the '50s and '60s before it, to better schools, to a new sector of 'green-collar' manufacturing jobs for chronically underemployed youth, and to enhanced moral standing in the global community. Al Qaeda can be defeated if we 'out-green' it; petrodictators can be toppled if we quit buying oil from them. The revolution's benefits are far-reaching and universal, financial and cultural. 'This is not about the whales anymore,' Friedman argues convincingly in this apposite companion to his bestseller, The World Is Flat. It's about the planet—and the oversized slice of it we've taken for ourselves."—Simon Maxwell Apter, NPR

"Much is at stake when a new Thomas Friedman book comes out. He is one of our most influential writers; people read his books to feel for the pulse of the moment. In 1999, The Lexus and the Olive Tree introduced thousands to the notion of globalization; it was like the gun that went off to signal that word and idea had arrived. When The World Is Flat appeared in 2005, there were days when almost everyone on the train was reading it. So Hot, Flat, and Crowded may make it official, for many, that ecology-mindedness is the character of our times. This is not, however, just another jeremiad on climate change. Friedman here attempts a more careful kind of argument. He links our environmental crises (pollution, climate change, habitat loss, overpopulation, energy crunch, squandering of natural resources) directly with our economic and political behavior. Going green, Friedman argues, will goose our economy, help remedy poverty and inequality, and restore our standing in the world. Throughout the book, he and his interviewees invoke the entanglement of environment, economics, and politics . . . And, as in any book like this, one can agree but wonder whether any of these fine ideas will ever be implemented. It will be much harder, however, to deny the advancing eyewall of the main thesis: that economics, politics, and the ecology are intimately continuous, always have been, always will be, and denial has endangered us. Hot, Flat, and Crowded (printed on 30 percent post-consumer recycled content, by the way) makes this case too well to be dismissed . . . If Hot, Flat, and Crowded can get more of us to stop ignoring it and back a concerted strategy to make things better, then I hope everyone reads it."—John Timpane, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An absorbing read. Friedman shows how rising oil prices link to a direct decline in freedom in oil-rich countries; how 'going green' truly is (or soon will be) the economically competitive direction for corporations to move; how preserving biodiversity is as essential as developing clean energy; how all meaningful conservation movements, even in the farthest reaches of Brazil, are local; and how China's government, with much worse environment, population pressure and pollution, is outperforming the U.S. in 'green' reforms. He doesn't minimize the stakes this time. Our oil addiction fuels both sides of the war on terror and is killing democracy overseas—'I can't think of anything more stupid.' President Bush's refusal to reduce oil dependence might be called 'No Mullah Left Behind.' Friedman provides a fine textbook description of global warming—a polite misnomer better rendered as 'global climatic disruption.' Al Gore owes us an apology, he jokes, for underestimating the problem . . . One of the most interesting sections describes pressure from front-line U.S. military leaders in Iraq to 'go green.' Fuel supply trucks were repeated targets for terrorist bombers, so officers sought solar and wind generators to keep soldiers off the roads, and innovative insulation of tents to cut the cost of air conditioning in the desert. Quiet facts leap off the page. On some days, 25 percent of the polluting matter over Los Angeles originated in China. Indoor air pollution from cooking fires kills 1.6 million Africans a year, mostly young children and mothers. But there's also a wonderful science-fiction-ish vision of an energy-efficient and healthy future, too, where household appliances monitor and adjust their own energy usage, plug-in electric vehicles generate new power that consumers can sell back to power companies, and bakeries and pizza companies use school cafeterias during their off-hours. It's an alarming and inspiring book, and certain to be another best-seller."—David Loftus, The Oregonian (Portland)

"Thomas Friedman's bestselling The World is Flat would be a tough act to follow for the most talented of authors; however, Friedman pulls it off with ease in his newest book released this week, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How it Can Renew America. Throughout the book, Friedman explains that the volatile mixture of global warming, ever-increasing and longer living populations, and a burgeoning middle class has reached critical mass: he warns that unless drastic changes are made—and made quickly—the stability of life as we know it will be dramatically altered, and not for the better . . . Friedman makes his case with clarity and wit. Hot, Flat, and Crowded promises to be not just one of the most important books of 2008, but one that every modern American—liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between—should read and consider."—Michelle Kerns, The Examiner

"Friedman went from Pulitzer Prize winning author, to pop-culture touchstone with his 2005 The World Is Flat. Flat made the case, with plenty of examples, that the tech bubble had made the world a flatter place, that it was much easier for individuals or companies around the world, be able to compete in the First World. In a similar vein, Hot, Flat, and Crowded makes the argument that two different crises, America's lack of national purpose in the post 9/11 world, and the growing environmental crisis (the Hot and Crowded part of the title) can be dealt with together, giving America a purpose and drive to solve those very environmental and economic problems that can also lower our risks in unstable parts of the world. Yes it is riding on the coattails of his previous book, but Friedman doesn't just retread his previous work, but takes the implications of what Flat meant in the longer term, and comes up with suggestions for fixing the trends he sees as most dangerous, both for America and the world as a whole. Many of his suggestions are capitalistic at their core—spending more money than is profitable on Green technologies, and assuming that the benefit will be much like that for the Tech bubble, lowering the barrier to entry for hundreds of companies to create even more cost savings or technological fixes. Other suggestions are more government imposed, much higher gasoline taxes and floor prices for crude oil, to encourage investment in alternative energy. Regardless of your opinion of his ideas, you will be, or already are talking about them. And will be for years to come."—Sacramento Book Review

"Currently a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, Friedman has four previous books, including The World Is Flat, in which he addresses the massive changes brought about by globalization. The thoughtful and thoroughly-researched plan he proposes in this book is more likely than all the Go Green public service announces combined to make a real dent in the way Americans view their role in environment destruction. There's no list of quick and easy planet-saving tips here—Friedman recognizes that we are far beyond the day when backyard gardens can have a real impact on our future. By focusing on issues that appeal to a majority of Americans—money and patriotism—Friedman has targeted the right market. The question remains: does American spirit and financial intelligence still exist?"—Deborah Adams, Northeast Book Reviews

"[Hot, Flat, and Crowded] is an urgent primer on the need for a clean energy system, engagingly written in his usual folksy and anecdotal style."—Ben Naparstek, The Jerusalem Post

"Global warming is real, energy use is rising, the global economy is here, and a lot more people are contributing to all three. That spells big trouble for all of us, says Friedman, unless we immediately take steps that will fundamentally change the way we live our lives, consume our energy, protect our biodiversity, enhance cross-global collaboration and improve education throughout the world. This cooperative, global effort—which Friedman argues America must lead, restoring our moral and technological leadership in the process . . . The strength of Hot, Flat, and Crowded is that he is convincing that we must achieve these goals, and he backs up his arguments with reams of statistics, anecdotes and interviews with experts from around the world. One of Friedman's most provocative arguments is that '. . . America no longer can afford the luxury of allowing old-fashioned, non-innovative capitalism to be at the heart of its industrial system, distorting and threatening the system as a whole.' Nowhere is this more true than in energy, where companies explore and use fossil fuels ('fuels from hell') to sustain a carbon-based economy. Friedman calls for a mixture of incentives and regulations to change that, arguing that we must find ways to create cheap, reliable, renewable electrons (through global collaboration enabled by the Internet). America has 'privatized our will,' Friedman writes, and we must change that or suffer nature's consequences . . . Central to Friedman's thesis is that we need clean, renewable energy sources, yet 'the American pet food industry spends more each year on R&D than the American utilities industry does' . . . This is a sobering assessment of the state of the world, particularly world energy use. Contrasting Friedman's book with political ads about gasoline prices will give your outlook a refreshing shot of absurdity. Friedman is persuasive about our need to change."—Dan Danbom, Rocky Mountain News

"My husband and I recently returned from a business trip to Germany, where gas prices are about $9 per gallon. That should make Americans feel better. Of course, like most Europeans, Germans rely on excellent public transportation and smaller cars than we do. Perhaps that is our future, too. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Thomas L. Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. Friedman, author of the best-selling The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, wrote in that important book how technology, the Internet and the lowering of trade and political barriers have instantly connected people worldwide. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman expounds on that and tackles the hot-button issues of energy, overpopulation, global warming, carbon emissions, the lack of political leadership to address these problems and the rise of countries such as India and China. Friedman argues for a green revolution. He says America should take the lead in devoting more manpower and resources to solving these problems. That, in turn, will help America rise again as an economic superpower and help other countries with similar problems."—Pam Bilger, Charlotte Observer

"The most inspiring call I’ve seen for an American-led energy, environmental and conservation revolution is Hot, Flat, and Crowded, the best-seller by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner."—Jack Z. Smith, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"In his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman provides a fresh outlook on the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy. The book proposes an ambitious national strategy to save the planet from overhearing and to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive and more secure."—Atlanta Business Chronicle

"The writer Thomas Friedman paints a convincing picture of what needs to be done in his current nonfiction bestseller, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. He describes an increasingly crowded planet with a global economy and a severe problem of global warming."—The Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ)