Foreign Policy: Thomas Friedman’s Plan for a Hot, Flat, and Crowded World

One other article I found of interest today, a short interview by Foreign Policy magazine with Tom Friedman, the NY Times columnist and author. Tom is coming out with a new book, and I thought three sections of the interview were worth bringing some more exposure: on American oil "independence" and offshore drilling, on Tom's vision of a "green revolution," and a brief discussion about the possibility of China going green before the U.S. The entire article can be read here.

BTW, that "drill, drill, drill" quotation is a classic: When I hear McCain pounding the table for “drill, drill, drill,” it reminds me of someone pounding the table for IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution.

Foreign Policy: In his speech to the Democratic National Convention last Thursday, U.S. Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama promised, “In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” Is that even feasible? Does anyone you talk to believe that’s doable?

Thomas Friedman: Well, if you just talked about oil imports from the Middle East, I think it is feasible. I don’t know exactly how he would want to get there, but I think that it is a feasible goal if you’re just talking about the percentage of our oil that comes from the Middle East.

FP: And what about drilling? Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin, and President George W. Bush are implying that lifting environmental restrictions on drilling is the way to promote energy independence.

TF: Well, I think it’s patent nonsense. No one believes that somehow offshore, there’s enough oil in any near term and even the long term to provide us oil independence. It’s the wrong approach because in a world that’s hot, flat, and crowded, fossil fuels—and particularly crude oil—are going to be expensive and exhausting. Therefore the focus should be on the next great global industry: clean energy technology. When I hear McCain pounding the table for “drill, drill, drill,” it reminds me of someone pounding the table for IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution.

I’m not against offshore drilling, by the way, because I believe the technology and the safety has improved far beyond where it was back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, even. What I’m against is making it the centerpiece of our energy policy. If all McCain said was, “Let’s drill, but let’s also throw everything into innovating the next generation of clean-energy technologies,” I’d say, “You’ve got it exactly right, pal.”

FP: Your new book is called Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. What do you mean by a “green revolution” and how do we get there from here?

TF: The green revolution is about how we produce abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons, which are the answer to the big problems we face in the world today. I would point to five problems, and they’re all related: Energy and resource supply and demand, petrodictatorship, climate change, biodiversity loss, and energy poverty. They all have one solution: abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons. The search for and the discovery of a source of those electrons is going to be the next great global industry. And I think the country that mounts a revolution to be the leader of that industry is going to be a country whose standard of living is going to improve, whose respect in the world is going to improve, whose air is going to improve, whose innovation is going to improve, and whose national security is going to improve. That’s what this book is about.
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I want a green-energy bubble. I want so many people throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google. But I don’t want a Manhattan Project of 12 people in Los Alamos. I want it to be like the IT revolution: everyone becoming a programmer. Only in this case, it’s everyone becoming a green innovator. What IT was to the 80s and 90s, ET, energy technology, will be to the early 21st century.

FP: What conditions don’t exist right now that could create this bubble?

TF: Three things. One is a price on carbon, a fixed, durable price signal that says, “Carbon is always going to be this price.” Let’s just use a simple example: We put a floor under the price of crude oil that says, “Oil simply will not fall below $110 a barrel. If it does, we’ll tax it up.”

Second, we need to change the bargain we have with our electric and natural gas power utilities. Your dad was right when he came into your room and you’d left the lights on and he said, “What, do you own stock in the utility company?” He was right, because the more you left your lights on, the more money the utility made. And we need to change that bargain—this is already going on in California—so that utilities are paid by how much energy they help you save, not by how much energy they help you consume.

And third, we need a national renewable portfolio standard that says to every utility, “By 2025, you need to produce 30 percent of your electricity by renewable power: wind, solar, biomass, hydro, you name it.”

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FP: You went to China for the Olympic Games, and I know you’ve been there many times in the past. Do you think China is serious about going green? Is China going to have a green revolution before the United States does?

TF: Every time I go to China, as I say in the book, it always strikes me that people speak with greater ease and breathe with greater difficulty. As the country grows, it gets more integrated with the world, standards of living rise, and people are able to move more and have more personal freedom. I don’t want to exaggerate it, but clearly it’s a more open place.

So, they speak with greater ease but they breathe with greater difficulty. And that’s a real tension. Right now, if you said, “Tom, snapshot today: Where’s China at? OK, choice: More growth or less pollution?” They’re going to go for more growth. Look what happened after the Olympics. They cleaned up Beijing for two weeks by shutting down factories and limiting driving. But as soon as the Olympics were over, they went back to the old system.

But you’re also getting a transition. You’re getting the birth of wind power and solar companies in China, so they’re seeing the market potential. And you’re seeing the rise of an environmental consciousness. The inertia and the momentum of the old, pure GDP system is much stronger than the green GDP system, but there is now a competition between the two.

China is hiding behind the United States, saying, “If the Americans aren’t going to do it, why should we?” When we move they will move, because we define modernity for them. They’ve copied us: our highways, our cars—the whole thing. And when we change, they will change.