Tom Friedman on Global Warming

He talked to a capacity crowd this evening at the Flint Center at DeAnza College in Cupertino. He made a very powerful case for doing something about global warming. On the other hand, he failed miserably in justifying the Iraq War (why was he even trying).

Global Warming

Using clever slides, he tied together the economic crisis (subprime) and the environmental crisis.

1. They both underpriced the risk
2. They both privatized the gains, and
3. They both socialized the losses

If you jump off an 80 story bldg, for the first 79 floors you will feel like you are flying. That is what was going on on wall street and in nature. We are now at the 80th floor - having hit the ground - and are going to pay for it.

He believes that our generation (the baby boomers) ate through much of what our parents bequeathed us. The result is that the chances of our children having a better life than us are close to zero (unless we can address the energy issue).

That launched him into his new book - Hot, Flat and Crowded. Hot, because of global warming, flat because of rising middle class all over the world, and crowded because of continuing population growth. (In 1830, there were 1B people in the world. In 2008, there were 1B teenagers.)

These three factors (hot, flat and crowded) came together around the turn of the century, and are driving five megatrends

1. Energy and natural resources supply and demand
2. Petrodictatorship
3. Climate change
4. Energy poverty
5. Bio diversity loss

He addressed each of them with cogent arguments, backed up with data and great examples.

On biodiversity, he mentioned that our children will have to play Noah - for there will be lots of species of which there will only be two members left on earth. If humans don't do anything about them, these species will die out - like they are dying today - at the rate of one species every 20 minutes.

The five problems all have the same solution - abundant, cheap, clean and reliable electricity. Whichever country succeeds at this will be the next leader. And, his view is that USA must strive to be this leader.

Doing this will take sacrifices. Unfortunately, people are not willing to make sacrifices. Instead, they are hiding behind politics - becuase a democrat (Al Gore) is fighting against climate change, conservatives are opposing him.

Iraq and Afghan Wars

Like many people, he is tying 9-11 to the Iraq war. This is an idea that has been discredited for a long time. Why would he do this, I don't understand. His other argument was that we are spreading democracy in the world through this. Right! Beat up people to teach them not to beat others up. He has got to move on from this extreme conservative position.