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Journalism of Courage
Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Thomas L. Friedman
Allen Lane, Rs 595
Thomas Friedman gives his prescription for saving the planet from apocalypse 8212; technological innovation. And how only a green nation can be the next superpower
In some ways, the subprime mortgage mess and housing crisis are metaphors for what has come over America in recent years: A certain connection between hard work, achievement, and accountability has been broken. We8217;ve become a subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity 8212; putting nothing down and making no payments for two years.8221; The author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes and The World is Flat writes extremely well. These books don8217;t become bestsellers and the author doesn8217;t win Pulitzer Prizes for nothing. As a journalist The New York Times, Tom Friedman is mandated to produce good copy. However, what distinguishes his books, including the present one, is a capacity for amassing research, personalising the output so that readers find it easy to relate to and coining or borrowing with due acknowledgement neat turns of phrases or anecdotes, so that the packaged bundle provides for compelling reading. Contrary to impression conveyed by the quote, this book isn8217;t about the US economy. It is about the hot, flat and crowded environment we live in and about what we might do to save it. 8220;We8221; is with primary reference to US and China. Unlike The World is Flat, India only figures tangentially.
However, there are juicy twists and turns. 8220;As an Egyptian cabinet minister remarked to me: It is like the developed world ate all the hors d8217;oeuvres, all the entrees, and all the desserts and then invited the developing world for a little coffee and asked us to split the whole bill. That8217;s not going to happen.8221; So much for Kyoto. Or take the 2004 anecdote about manhole covers disappearing from Taiwan, Mongolia, Chicago, Scotland, Montreal, Gloucester and Kuala Lumpur to fuel Chinese demand for scrap metal. Interesting correlations are drawn between lack of freedom in petrolist states authoritarian states that have petroleum and crude oil prices. What do we do about these problems? That takes us to the six chapters in the third section. Most discussions on saving planet earth from apocalypse overdo the Malthusian spectre and are impossibly naive in solutions suggested. Friedman does neither and the solution is based not on heavy-handed, government-driven regulation, but on technological innovation, driven by appropriate price signals. Paraphrasing a quote ascribed to Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani former Saudi Arabian oil minister, the stone age didn8217;t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because bronze and iron age technology took over. REEFIGDCPEERPC needs to be made lower than TTCOBCOG 8212; an expansion of Google8217;s RE renewable energy being made cheaper than C coal. REEFIGDCPEERPC stands for a renewable energy ecosystem for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation, while TTCOBCOG stands for the true cost of burning coal, oil, and gas.
China and India will drive the innovation if the US doesn8217;t. But Chindia won8217;t do it efficiently and are inside the technology frontier, a point attributed to Ramalinga Raju. 8220;India and China may take away a few American jobs with cheaper labor, but those are transient advantages. However, if one of these countries consistently outgreens America, they will be seizing a sustainable advantage. In the Energy-Climate Era, you cannot be the leader of the world without being the world8217;s leader in conceptualizing, designing, manufacturing, deploying, and inspiring clean power solutions.8221; In a way, this ends the book and it has been a compelling read. But, two more sections are thrown in, one on whether red China can become green and the other on America. The lament on American policymaking has already been mentioned. Chinese leaders, in contrast, do what is needed, because nothing like a 8220;democracy tax8221; exists. Would it be so bad to be China for a single day, though not for two? That8217;s an even more dangerous thought than the endangered planet.
