Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman
A. Part I: Where we are
1. Chapter 1. Where birds don’t fly
a) America lost its way
b) Greening can restore our leadership
c) I am proposing “Code Green”
(1) Replace code red of anti communism
d) Putting up walls
e) Dumb as we wanna be—subprime nation—lifting gasoline tax
in summer of 2008—McCain and Clinton, vs. Obama
f) Economic crisis may be opportunity—nation building at home
g) Defensiveness and unwillingness to take on big challenge
(1) Reverse of energy and environmental policies of
seventies in the 80’s; Reagan removes solar panels 15
(2) Refusal to demand higher fuel efficiency or carbon tax
(3) Disastrousness of Bush’s energy policies
(4) Squandered possibilities of 9/11
h) Code Green is a way to build national power
i) Absence of national goal; wind has changed direction
2. Chapter 2. 1 E.C.E
a) Energy-Climate-Era
b) Review flattening of world—globalization—in previous 2005
book; ignored environment and population
c) Five problems
(1) Growing demand for energy and resources
(2) Transfer of wealth to petrodictators
(3) Climate change
(4) Energy poverty
(5) Biodiversity loss
d) Population
(1) Despite title and early mention only given 2 pages 28-9
(2) 1953: 2.7 billion, today 6.7 billion, 2050, 9.2 billion
e) Flat
(1) Computer, internet, workflow smoothness, demise of
communism: seamless global marketplace
f) Hot
(1) Warming explanation
g) Back to five problems [messed up structure; going over same
ground and categories, perfunctorily here]
(1) Resource shortage—reducing supply, increasing
demand 38
(a) Emerging markets have emerged
(2) Petrodictatorship—transfer of wealth, e.g. Russia
(3) Climate change
(4) Energy poverty in places that didn’t use to have it
(5) Biodiversity
h) New Era—1/1/2000
B. Part II: How we got here
1. Chapter 3. Our Carbon Copies (or Too Many Americans) Energy and
Resource Supply and Demand
a) Affluenza
b) Consumerism in china; imitating Americans
(1) We’re in no position to lecture, but we are in a position
to know better
(2) One “Americum” 56
(3) Avoiding our mistakes unlikely unless we show the
way
c) Chinese affluenza—big homes, beef, foreign travel
d) India’s growth 63
e) Unsustainable given the combination of population and
individual demand—Jared Diamond, Larry Brilliant
(1) Food, space, energy
(2) No place on earth to suck resources from as in the past
f) Alternative: radical resource productivity—Cradle to Cradle 71
g) Nevertheless consumption is still increasing in America
[economic downturn changes this—is it for better or worse?]
2. Chapter 4. Fill ‘er up with Dictators: Petropolitics
a) Saudi finances anti American madrasas
b) Our oil addiction financing reversal of democratic trends in oil
producing countries
c) We finance both sides in war against terror
d) Oil and Islam
(1) Saudi wealth enriched Desert Islam, resisting trend to
modernity and democracy
(a) Saudis also want to restrain most virulent
fundamentalists
(2) [no mention of Iraq]
(3) Iran does the same thing with its oil money to
Hezbollah and the other one in Gaza
e) Friedman’s law of oil and freedom—doubtful, but grandiose
(1) The higher the price of oil, the weaker the slower the
pace of freedom.
f) Oil and geopolitics
(1) Power of Saudis—insulation from scrutiny—potential
power in holding US Treasury ransom
g) Post Iraq
(1) “no matter what happens in Iraq, we are not going to
invade another Arab-Muslim country inthename of reform
any time soon.” 108
(2) only way to control them is to reduce oil
consumption—Second Law of Petropolitics 110
3. Chapter 5. Gobal Weirding
a) Hurricanes and warming—questionable climate science
b) We affect nature
c) On Al Gore—whom he now admires and with whom he sat on
a panel
(1) Romm recruited Gore to publicize climate change
d) Ridiculing deniers—its worse than Gore said
e) Explaining GHG
f) IPCC is too optimistic
g) Takes on deniers: Imhofe and Limbaugh
h) Scary stuff we know; scary stuff we don’t know 123
i) Positive and negative feedback loops
(1) Exponential change; quoting Woolsey
(2) Holdren
j) “Let us Pray” about Australia—present day fires
(1) Montana’s hunters and fishermen—date of elk hunting
season
4. Chapter 6. Age of Noah
a) Travels with Conservation International with his wife
b) Benefits of biodiversity
c) The main biodiversity challenge to the Pantanal came
from…globalization…economic upsides and ecological downsides
147
d) Extinctions—irreversible
e) Later is over
5. Chapter 7. Energy Poverty
a) No access to electricity
b) Indoor air pollution from open fires
c) No functioning utilities because of corrupt or non functional
governments
d) Women do the work, more affected
e) Every problem is an energy problem
f) Harder to adapt to climate change
g) Lack of water
h) No computers—that’s the worst 164
i) Imagine if we could tap into the creativity and innovative
capacity of the worlds poorest people
j) Need IT and ET to create balance of city and country, not
require people to move to cities
6. Chapter 8. Green is new Red, White and Blue—transition chapter
covering material presented later
a) Loathsome slogans
(1) opportunities disguised as problems—cheerleading;
exhortation; I was talking at Stanford… 170
(2) we will have to pay in the future
(3) “green” is no longer a fad, green is no longer a boutique
statement… 172
(4) mother of all markets…not your grandfather’s green
movement anymore. This is Code Green. It’s about
national power.
(5) even if climate change skeptics are right
(6) if we don’t seize the opportunity, India and China will
(7) world is waiting for us. Rah rah
b) Plan A—replace Dirty Fuels system—everything is
connected—systems thinking—redesign; Prius approach
c) Clean Electrons—key is innovation; deploy existing
technology, create new tech
d) Renewables are good, not biofuels
e) Energy Efficiency and resource productivity
f) Ethic of conservation—not the opposite of consumption; no
need to shrink the way we live [his lifestyle]
g) Imagine Senhor Verde in Brazil—stewarding the land 197
h) Present pace is too slow
C. Part III How we move forward
1. Chapter 9. 205 Easy ways to Save the Earth
a) Obnoxious dialogue—“what do you mean…”
b) Everybody wants to be green
c) Cynicism about greenwash and about consumer choices
making major difference (Neal)
d) Sokolow-Pacala wedges
e) Show the grand, but doable scale of the project
f) It will take all investment and intellectual capital to do this
g) View from Mt. Everest: “Turn the page”
2. Chapter 10. The Energy Internet, When IT meets ET
a) Smart Grid…Magic Show
b) How utility regulation works.
(1) Utilities made money by building stuff: more power
plants and power lines that enabled them to sell more
electrons
(2) Need to incentivize conservation and clean energy
c) 20 E.C.E. [224-236 in italics]
(1) Comment
(a) rich with innovative ideas-- utopian gadgetry,
based on prius-type immediate feedback “smart”
technology
(b) all done as marketing—approving business and
consumption and branding and constant
“economist” calculations—price point engineering
(2) smart black box—sbb—personal energy dashboard
(a) controls temperature, appliances, car to
minimize cost and factor grid load, and accept
power you store
(b) fuels from heaven vs. fuels from hell plan
(c) how slow can my meter go
(d) green friends and family plan—store energy
from nighttime source and disburse during the day
(3) smart grid controls demand by changing prices
according to supply and demand
(4) energy efficient service companies
(5) sunray terminal—servers near dams and powersources
(6) price the road—prices vary according to congestion and
CO2 production
(7) smart car—produces and stores energy
(8) dual use of space—school kitchen and Einstein bagels
(9) building standards like mileage standards
(10)
prototypes in existence now
3. Chapter 11. Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones—[topic
here is making Green profitable—price signals and government policy]
a) Need for innovation in energy production
(1) He was trying to convince Chinese to make clean
power competition with US
(2) we haven’t really tried
(3) we cant regulate our way out, we have to innovate
(4) There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and
that is Father Profit 244
(5) There is no free market in energy
(a) Oil and corn lobby
(b) Oil is too cheap
(6) Need industrial policy to promote energy innovation
and commercialization
(7) Price signals
(8) We’ve been feeble in investing in research—pet food
industry spends more on R and D than utilities industry
247
(9) GE selling same coal fired plant for 26 years; no motive
for energy industry to innovate
(10)
No competition for consumers—no price signal
b) Prices and innovation
(1) Yamani warns OPEC not to raise prices to fast or world
will find alternate energy sources
(2) Price signal provided by carbon tax, gas tax increase,
renewable energy mandate, cap and trade system
(3) Government must make you pay full cost of CO2
(4) Taxes and subsidies—government policy instead of
government control—keep dirty energy from being cheap
and even more from fluctuating wildly [what they’ve been
doing for the past 3 years]
(5) Europeans have done this
(6) Need for certainty
(7) Generate a bubble in clean energy; IT bubble was good
259
c) Prices as Brake on Bad Behavior
(1) Fraudulent accounting—externalities 260
d) Price Signal
(1) Cap and trade, carbon tax is better 262, whichever can
get through Congress without being watered down is better
(2) Price floor for gas
(3) Feebates—Lovins
(4) Gas tax increase
(5) National renewable energy mandate to utilities
(6) Loan guarantees for nuclear 264
e) Read my lips
(1) Machiavelli—hard to make change
(2) Speech for politician—same stuff: either pay taxes here
or to Saudis
4. Chapter 12. If it isn’t boring, it isn’t green
a) standards and regulations
b) GE transportation makes locomotives that sell overseas
because they comply with EPA Tier II emission standards
c) Regulations pushed us there 271
d) Pollution is waste; regulations save money
e) Lawyers and lobbyists stand in way of engineers
f) Tiny tightening of regulation has huge impact on energy
generation
g) Companies get used to fighting regulation, instead of seeing
them as a way to knock out competitors
h) 1973 oil price shock led CA to increase efficiency standards;
and per capita consumption dropped for good
i) who pays the bills—when schoolboards who were paying,
asked pepsi to make more efficient soda machines, they did
j) it’s the design stupid
(1) challenge from Texas Instruments: to make building
cheaper to build and operate—greened it with Lovins
(2) prius of wafer factories
(3) system of systems; design from scratch
(4) LEED
k) Govt. needs to outlaw wasting energy: no rules, no fines,
greenhouse gases
l) Utilities: profits and rising sales have to be decoupled;
incentivize conservation
m) Promote distributed energy
n) Electric cars—power up at night when capacity isn’t used
o) Smart grid groups; govt. needs to provide clarity and
predictability
p) Make word green go away; everything must be green.
5. Chapter 13. A Million Noahs, a Million Arks
a) notable absence of credibility on this topic, which isn’t well
integrated
b) Biodiversity—we need a global strategy for preservation of our
forests
c) Environmental degradation—Indonesia example
d) Redefine relation to natural world
e) Proposals
(1) National policy to set aside protected areas
(2) Economic opportunities of local community
(3) Private sector investors
(4) Local govt willing to preserve
(5) Improve primary and secondary education
f) Need for local leaders
g) Example in Sumatra: orangutangs, Mr. Supriatna.
h) Forests as carbon sinks—clearing them with fire is bad
i) Providing local products grown in rainforest
j) Madrasa to take on protecting river, stop mining. Importance
of Indonesia in forests and other natural resources
k) Logging
l) Green is good…no child left indoors
m) Gandhi: “to forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to
forget ourselves.” [Gandhi viewed with approval/earlier rejected]
315
n) Plea for nature for its own sake, transcendant value
[contradictory to earlier positions and general outlook] 316
6. Chapter 14. Outgreening al-Qaeda (or Buy one, Get Four Free)
a) green hawk movement in military
b) energy needed for forces
c) make soldiers less vulnerable in carrying fuel
d) outgreening competition—requires collaborative environment
and long-term view—make you popular and attract students
e) virtuous business cycle
f) converting cabs from yellow to green
g) idling town cars
h) Hug shareholders, not just trees 331
(1) Server farms
(2) The network cloud
(3) Energy efficient server
(4) Sun Microsystems wants carbon tax
(5) Chief executive officer needs to be chief energy officer
i) Green Jobs—Van Jones [New section, doesn’t belong under
last rubric]
(1) Green collar jobs
(2) Oakland Apollo alliance
(3) Money for Green Jobs act of 2007 not yet appropriated
337
(4) Tax incentives for greening homes for poor people
j) Environmental injustice
D. Part IV China
1. Chapter 15. Can Red China become Green China
a) china’s grown 10%/year for last three decades
b) worlds biggest carbon emitter
c) Can America lead a green revolution, can China follow? 344
d) The movie “Speed”
e) Green GDPism 345
(1) Allowing press to spotlight polluters
(2) Bottom up as well as top down
(3) Enlist civil society for enforcement
f) Environmental crisis
g) China took on dirty industries of the rest of the world in 2001,
fell off the wagon—involvement with WTO
h) They have not backed off in 2007-8—11th five year plan
i) High green targets, doubtful if they’ll make it—cf. China
material in CLA report
j) Charge higher prices for electricity to inefficient companies
k) Need for civil society to monitor compliance—praise of Sierra
Club 356-7
l) Repeat earlier point—examples of citizen involvement,
emerging groups
m) Pushing Green Tech industries—Dalian’s new convention
center
n) Auto emissions are at European standards
o) Rich Green entrepeneur
p) Friedman wont predict how it will play out 364, but China’s
leaders could make it happen like the one child policy
q) America could take the lead by committing to outgreen
Chinap; we need a race
r) We need to set an example and exert leadership
(1) They need more democracy to succeed
E. Part V: America
1. Chapter 16. China for a Day (but Not for Two)
a) GE CEO says clear directives from the top would create clear
price signal for carbon which would lead to more investment
b) If only we could have top down direction
c) we are primed for a green takeoff—MIT students
d) no national energy policy—instead we have only energy
politics 376
e) power of coal lobby
f) clean coal as oxymoron
g) Congress doesn’t renew incentives; no long-term confidence in
proceeding [fluctuating gas and oil prices destroy incentives—e.g.
windpower boon Pickens]
h) No energy research—not backed by Federal Govt
i) Chu is the guy [before Obama nominated him]
j) Story will make you cry: First Solar is forced to go to
Germany because there’s no reliable US market
k) German guarantees are for 20 years
l) Blowin in the wind
(1) Regulatory hurdles, especially environmental ones—
eleven years to connect a wind farm 393
2. Chapter 17. A Democratic China or a Banana Republic
a) letter from little girl
b) more important to change leaders than lightbulbs
c) mobilization like civil rights movement or US mobilization to
fight WWII
d) we need million people in the streets
e) get in the faces of Exxon and Peabody lobbyists 400
f) Nissan, with plants in Mississippi, got Trent Lott to vote for
higher fuel economy—popular and corporate pressure—we need a
revolution
g) Leadership: need a purposeful and charismatic president
h) Need a real Dept of Energy to centralize conflicting and
outdated energy policies now in control
i) Eulogy for Donella Meadows by Amory Lovins
(1) Inspirational; optimism
(2) Exactly enough time: starting now
F. My Comments
1. Style and Structure
a) Wordy, repetitious, and recursive
b) Inept sloganeering
(1) Chapter titles and headings
(2) Conclusion: “We are all sailing on the Mayflower
anew.” 412
c) Gauche arrogance
(1) Self-promotion and name dropping—contrast to
McKibben
(a) “My metric is very simple: whe I see Angelina
Jolie posing next to a vast field of solar panels…”
(2) Self-quotation
(3) Adulation of money and power
(4) Badgering tone: “Period. Full stop. Over and out.” 340
d) Book title and cover illustration—Bosch’s “Garden of Worldly
Delights”
(1) Attention getting, but ambiguous and off the mark, as
are many of his slogans, including the title.
(2) historians are divided as to whether the triptych's
central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise
lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an
"erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place
filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty".[9]
(3) The impression of a life lived without consequence, or
what art historian Hans Belting describes as "unspoilt and
immoral existence", is underscored by the absence of
children and old people.[49]
(4) In Fränger's view, the scene illustrates: a Utopia, a
garden of divine delight before the Fall, or—since Bosch
could not deny the existence of the dogma of Original
Sin—a millennial condition that would arise if, after
expiation of Original Sin, humanity were permitted to
return to Paradise and to a state of tranquil harmony
embracing all Creation.[50]
2. Credibility
a) Like McKibben and Gore—man with a mission
b) Afterward—buying up property in Virgina from developer,
planting trees and gardens and greening the house
c) Earlier successful books place him as apologist for
unsustainable globalism as well as promoter of Iraq war.
(1) corporatization, anti-democracy, greed, fluid capital,
short term gain, fiscalization, transport, destruction of
locals—see Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 294-7
d) Best seller, addressed to corporate crowd
e) Familiar ideas better expressed by others.
f) No environmental credentials, but enthusiasm and apparent
conviction may be of use in addressing new constituencies.