Friedman's revolution
After an effusive introduction by Nido Qubein, a speaker might worry about having a tough act to follow.
Not a problem for Thomas Friedman, who lectured at High Point University last night.
Known as an author and New York Times columnist (published twice weekly in the N&R), Friedman is a brilliant speaker. Without script or podium, only occasionally reading passages from his latest book, he held an audience of 600 students and town folk in the Hayworth Fine Arts Center spellbound for 75 minutes.
If you're a reader. you know Friedman knows a lot about almost everything and he's been almost everywhere. You also know he has a gift for presenting complex issues in ways you can understand.
That's exactly how he comes across on stage. But he's warmer and funnier in person than you can tell from his columns or books. He shares lots of anecdotes and wry observations. He tells stories with dramatic pauses and the right expressions and inflections. He did a funny riff, using Qubein as a foil, to make a point about energy pricing.
In short, he's entertaining and informative ...
... and provocative.
I think that's a fair word to describe someone who says Al Gore owes the world an apology ...
... for underestimating climate change.
And who says the green movement, so far, is a party ... when what's needed is a revolution.
"Have you even been to a revolution where no one got hurt?" he asked.
This is going to hurt.
Friedman has been delivering this message during a six-month book tour. Last night's lecture reflected the theme of the book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- And How It Can Renew America."
If you haven't read it yet, you've probably absorbed pieces of it from his columns, which he's using as a vehicle to call for action against the threats he sees as the greatest in human history.
He breaks them down into five parts:
1. Energy and resource supply and demand
2. Petrodictatorship
3. Climate change
4. Energy poverty
5. Biodiversity loss
He presented detailed explanations of each, then said one solution addresses them all: abundant, cheap, reliable, clean energy.
Whoever develops it, or wins the "earth race," will lead the world. And it better be America, Friedman added, proclaiming Green to be the next Red, White and Blue.
What's the energy answer? He doesn't know specifically, but he said this country has to stimulate innovation and give price advantages to clean energy while penalizing dirty.
That's going to be the painful part.
"You'll know the green revolution is here when you have to change or die," he warned.
During the Q&A, a student asked Friedman which country is getting it right so far. He called Denmark "the coolest, greenest country in the world." It imposes CO2 taxes, and gasoline costs $10 a gallon. Half the traffic on Copenhagan streets is bicycles. It has the biggest wind industry in the world.
He added that in 1973, Denmark was 99 percent dependent on Arab oil. Now, zero.
Part of the difference is North Sea oil, he conceded.
But the point is that in Denmark, "They pay more for what they burn but not what they earn."
Can the U.S. do it? Friedman's prescriptions strike me as incredibly expensive for a long time. There are casualties in revolutions, and some of them are innocent bystanders.
He insists "the stakes could not be higher, the payoff could not be greater. We have exactly enough time, starting now."
Comments (7)
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Dear Mr Friedman:
Thanks for not disappointing. How long have we been waging the "war on poverty?" Much longer, by far, than we've waged any war against the much less serious threats of Facism, Nazism, Communism, and a combination of those three, liberalism!
So climate change, something that have occuring with planet for BILLIONS of years, is a more imminent danger to us than Radical Islam, terrorism in general, Iran (whose psychotic leader believes he was put here to hasten the return of the 12th Imam, thereby ending the world!), N. Korea, and liberalism.
For at least 100 years we've had the hysterical zealots like Friedman warning us about the coming catastrophes of, alternately, global warming or the much more problematic, global cooling. I'm glad I was out of town when those things destroyed the planet, and presumably,
my home and my neighborhood. For more on this go to Google, and key in "Fire and Ice!"
Friedman, like most climate change hypocrites, rather than boycotting all fossil fuels, and products derived from them, instead continues to fly around the world telling everyone to reduce their
carbon footprint" while ignoring his own "Bigfooted" print!
Posted on March 19, 2009 11:34 AM
I'd love to have covered that talk but they didn't open it to the public, and therefore we didn't cover it. For what they're paying I could see them wanting too keep talks like this exclusive, but I still wish everyone could attend these.
Posted on March 19, 2009 11:38 AM
With only a 600-seat venue, my guess is they wanted to make sure as many students and faculty as possible could attend.
Posted on March 19, 2009 11:44 AM
During the Q&A, a student asked Friedman which country is getting it right so far. He called Denmark "the coolest, greenest country in the world." It imposes CO2 taxes, and gasoline costs $10 a gallon. Half the traffic on Copenhagan streets is bicycles. It has the biggest wind industry in the world.* Doug
Sounds like Friedman is really a red Revolutionary mouthpiece, who wants to drive one back to the dark ages with Demark as the socialist Paradise example. So Doug! Do you really believe Friedman is just promoting another "Thunder Dome" movie or pushing the biggest drug and sex culture and welfare state in the world like Denmark
Posted on March 19, 2009 12:45 PM
Hey Joe, if you can't get to hear Friedman, I believe that Air America is still on the air on a station or two somewhere. If you like Friedman, you'll love AA!
Posted on March 19, 2009 1:04 PM
There are so many things that can and SHOULD be done to limit our need for foreign oil; namely mid-east oil.
The biggest whack that should be taken is at those politicians who are riding the hip pockets of lobbyists - boy, what a change that would be - but, we're getting short changed instead. Thanks a million - err, billion - uhhh I mean TRILLION, Barry.
How about limiting the automobile use for non-working persons under the age of 18? That would save a lot. How about limiting automobile use for ANYONE who doesn't work? After all, driving is a privilege, is it not?
Maybe we should find a way to harness the energy of cow farts too; there's got to be a method of conversion for this untapped fuel.
Not gonna happen, none of it. Why? A. we're too lazy. B. we're too brainwashed to think for ourselves and C. we're too damned politically correct. So, we deserve what we get! Collectively speaking, that is.
Posted on March 19, 2009 2:14 PM
It would be much easier if the US was kind of small and geographically and culturally homogeneous like Denmark instead of being five hundred times it's size and markedly diverse with huge states like Montana and Nevada where you can drive for like a day and see maybe one other person. It'd be easy. Think of how much more environmentally friendly a Chihuahua is compared to an Irish Wolfhound. It's comparing apples to pumpkins.
Posted on March 19, 2009 2:29 PM