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Summary
Summary
Thomas L. Friedman's phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America's surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.
Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world's middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is "hot, flat, and crowded." Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.
This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.
In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation's greatest natural resources.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.
Author Notes
Journalist Thomas L. Friedman was born in 1953 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Friedman graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Mediterranean Studies and earned a graduate degree from Oxford in Modern Middle East Studies. His reporting on the war in Lebanon won the George Polk Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He won a second Pulitzer for his work in Israel. Friedman began his career as a correspondent for United Press International and later served as bureau chief for the New York Times in Beirut and Jerusalem. He moved to the op-ed page of The New York Times as a foreign affairs columnist. In 2002, Friedman won his third Pulitzer Prize, this time for Commentary.
Friedman wrote about his experiences as a Jewish-American reporter in the Middle East in From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won the National Book Award in 1989. The bestselling Lexus and the Olive Tree won the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy. He wrote Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 and The World Is Flat, which received the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. His other works include Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0, and That Used to Be Us which made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. His title, Thank You for Being Late, made the New York Times Best Seller List in 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the intersection of leveled economic and technological access (flat) with an aggravated environment (hot) and a surging population (crowded), Friedman stands behind his pulpit as preacher, prophet and promoter of a green revolution starting in the United States. He provides an exhaustive and convincing argument about the need for the United States to transition to more sustainable systems of energy soon or risk any possible chance of maintaining hegemony. His ability to identify and summarize succinctly the issues and controversies over resistance to a green revolution is matched by his clear and definitive solutions to these forthcoming problems. Oliver Wyman provides a congenial and gentle voice that works well with the text. Given its overwhelming nature, Wyman performs without a hint of condescension. He navigates quotes within the text with distinguishing voices that sometimes hints at personality traits not referred to in the text. Impressively, Wyman keeps a consistency of cadence and tone throughout the entire reading. A Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Friedman mapped the level economic playing field created by digital technology and global free-market capitalism in The World Is Flat (2005). He now adds two crucial elements to his galvanizing analysis of the state of the world: climate change and the population explosion. We're trapped in a catastrophic vicious circle: burning fossil fuels accelerates global warming as the human population increases and the global economy grows, so, too, does oil consumption. Add the malevolence of mega-rich petrodictatorships and America's precipitous decline, and the need for change is urgent. Backed by flotillas of facts and observations gathered on his investigative journeys to the Middle East, China, India, and beyond, Friedman is lashing in his critique of America's failure to face energy and climate realities. Yet his belief in America's capacity for innovation inspires his call for Code Green, a concerted effort to take the lead in developing clean power and energy-efficiency systems and preserving the natural world. Fluent in business, politics, and science, Friedman cogently explains the complex challenges we face, reminds us of our adaptability, and defines environmentalism as the key to peace and democracy. Friedman's big,passionate, and solidly specific ecological primer, social manifesto, and realistic plan for a green revolution aimed at restoring America's greatness and securing a sustainable future should serve as a playbook for innovators and civic leaders.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Thomas L. Friedman makes the case that green politics are compatible with big business. THE environmental movement reserves a hallowed place for those books or films that have stirred people from their slumber and awoken them to the fragility of the planet: Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," Billl McKibben's "End of Nature" and, most recently, Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." Thomas L. Friedman's new book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" may lack the soaring, elegiac qualities of those others. But it conceivably just might goad America's wealthiest to face the threat of climate change and do something about it. Friedman, the thrice-Pulitzered foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times, has built a following beyond readers with an interest in international relations. His last book, "The World Is Flat," made him a best-selling author in business class, the kind of writer that those who turn left when boarding a plane feel they ought to be seen reading. Friedman does not shy away from this audience; indeed he sometimes seems to be writing especially for it. "Do half your employees use computers and half use paper, pencils and abacuses?" he asks in one passage, apparently confident that he is addressing a chief executive. For that very reason, Friedman could perhaps touch those who have so far eluded the green movement's reach: the hardheaded executives more worried by projections of receding profits than retreating glaciers. That constituency listened to Friedman on globalization and they might be ready to listen to him again on global warming. The form of "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" is trademark Friedman: a series of arguments, often distilled into mnemonic formulations, some snappier than others it's not A.D. 2008, but "1 E.C.E.," the first year of the "Energy-Climate Era" - all based on extensive, far-flung reporting, most of it consisting of interviews with experts, professors and, of course, C.E.O.s. What will appeal to can-do business types is that Friedman's book does not dwell, as, say, Gore's movie did, on describing the problem, but concentrates most on sketching possible solutions. It is in these passages that Friedman's argument really takes off, allowing him to give vent to his enthusiasm and unabashed idealism. Non-Americans might find his wide-eyed patriotism a touch saccharine if not naïve, but it's hard not to be carried along by his evident passion. To be sure, the book begins with a diagnosis of "where we are" and "how we got here" that is short on good cheer. We live, Friedman explains with reference to his previous work, in a world that is flat - a level economic playing field with fewer barriers between countries and individuals - but that is now also becoming crowded, thanks to rising population. And the problem is not just that the raw number of people is increasing, it's that many more are gaining access to an American level of consumerism. With the world's population of "Americans" heading toward two or three billion - all desiring the middle-class comforts of a car, a fridge and an air-conditioner - the global demand for energy is soaring to new heights. That, Friedman says, is unsustainable. This hunger for energy is dangerous not only because it means belching more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so pushing the temperature to dangerously high levels, but also because it is robbing the world of precious, and beautiful, biodiversity, destroying a unique species every 20 minutes. It also means we're lining the pockets of the autocrats who tend to control the world's reserves of fossil fuel, the "petrodictators." And we are opening an ever wider gap between the energy haves and the energy have-nots, those who cannot take part in the "flat" world because they cannot switch on a light bulb, let alone a laptop. Friedman knows what is to be done. The United States needs to set an example for the world to follow, by starting over and constructing an entirely new Clean Energy System, one that will send "clean electrons" into its homes, offices and cars - generated not by dirty old oil or coal, but by solar, wind and nuclear power - and that will use many fewer of those electrons, thanks to greater efficiency. In the book's most arresting passage, Friedman plays futurist and looks ahead - to "20 E.C.E." - imagining a world where an Energy Internet puts each one of your home appliances in touch with the power company, drawing out only the minimal power it needs to function and at the cheapest, off-peak times. Even your car, by now a plug-in hybrid that gets the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon, can charge its battery with solar power, which it then sells back to the grid. All this would, of course, require the most profound shift. As Friedman explains, utility companies were established at a time when the sources of power to generate electricity were assumed to be limitless. The utilities' responsibility was, and remains, to supply a constant flow of electrons to every household; they have a direct financial stake in keeping demand high. These companies need to be fundamentally rewired so that their rewards come from persuading us all to use less, not more, of their product. The way to do that, Friedman explains, is by "reshaping the market," not only to make us use less electricity, but to make the power companies buy energy from cleaner sources. It will take an entirely new regime of taxes, incentives and price signals, all set by the federal government. Oh, says the ideological free marketeer, we couldn't possibly meddle in the market like that. But guess what, Friedman replies: we already do. Washington has tilted the energy playing field for years - subsidizing oil, gas and coal and giving only puny, halting help to wind and solar power. It is, Friedman writes, "a market designed to keep fossil fuels cheap and renewables expensive and elusive." What's needed is the presidential leadership of an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Roosevelt to command enough authority to face down the fossil fuel lobbies and create a single, national system that would instantly release the pent-up innovation and creativity that is ready to get to work, cleaning up America's energy supply and reducing its demand. Once the United States has done that, and shown that there's money to be made from the new industry of "greening," the rest of the world will, as a matter of self-interest, follow suit. In the process, America will have discovered a national mission for itself once more. Readers of Friedman's earlier books may well pause at this point and wonder what has happened to their favorite evangelist for globalization. For it's hard not to detect a slight shift leftward in this conversion to radical, government-led action to save the planet. Friedman is at pains to insist that there's nothing leftie about caring for the environment: it's no longer "yoga mats, Birkenstock sandals, tofu." Indeed, in a fascinating section, he meets United States Army officers who have gone green, converted by the realization that the need to transport oil to generators in the Iraqi desert left their men needlessly exposed to enemy attack. They understood that if they could use less energy, or even generate their own, they would be safer. Nevertheless, Friedman inevitably finds himself making arguments - urging a muscular federal government to push aside the selfish interests of the big corporate lobbies - that were once confined to the left. It can lead him into contradictory terrain. Thus, he is committed to praising the globalizing forces that have flattened the world, but he despairs at their consequences. He mourns, for example, the burning of rain forests, quoting the noted entomologist Edward O. Wilson that it is "like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner." Yet he does not address the fact that multinational companies are able to come in and lay waste to these forests only because of the global trading rules Friedman once so admired. He deplores the nationalization of companies, seeing privatization as an index of freedom on a par with a free press and democratic elections - yet he also looks longingly at the well-resourced mass transit systems of Europe, which keep cars off the road and emit less carbon dioxide, and which are only possible thanks either to state ownership or to enormous, taxpayer-supported subsidies. He knows that we cannot simply consume more and more from a finite planet; he understands that prosperity is threatened by the very "nature of American capitalism"; he quotes approvingly the Norwegian oil executive who warns, "Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth." But Friedman does not surrender to these dark thoughts; he pulls himself together and recovers his faith in the American economic model. The free market will be fine, he says, so long as it's tweaked to start telling the truth, reflecting the true cost to the earth of all that we consume. THESE intellectual tensions are not the only flaws in "Hot, Flat, and Crowded." Scholarly types will doubtless find the first-person examples excessive: they will surely want to remind Friedman that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." General readers, too, may wish for a slightly leaner manuscript, lighter on complex technical detail, which can be overwhelming. Some of the interviewee quotations are either too baggy or too dense, as if Friedman has moved large sections of transcript into his text. The writing style, with constant new coinages and shorthand phrases - "I call this the 'Naked Gun 2½ rule'" - while winning in a column, can grate over the distance of a book. Whole sentences are repeated or italicized for emphasis, in the style of a spoken lecture. And there are some horribly mixed metaphors: "The demise of the Soviet Union and its iron curtain was like the elimination of a huge physical and political roadblock on the global economic playing field." But these are minor infelicities when set against a book that will be accessible outside the eco-converted, is grounded in detailed research and repeatedly hits its target. It contains some killer facts - the American pet food industry spends more on research and development than the country's power companies; Ronald Reagan stripped from the White House the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed as a symbolic step toward energy independence. Above all, it is fundamentally right on the biggest question of our age. If Friedman's profile and verve take his message where it needs to be heard, into the boardrooms of America and beyond, that can only be good - for all our sakes. Jonathan Freedland is a former Washington correspondent and now an editorial page columnist for The Guardian.
Library Journal Review
The audio edition of three-time Pulitzer Prize winner/New York Times columnist Friedman's The World Is Flat, which won an Audie Award in 2006, remains Macmillan Audio's top-selling title of all time. Audie Award-winning actor/narrator Oliver Wyman, who skillfully voiced that title, does the same with this one, in which Friedman addresses the triple threat of global warming, overconsumption, and population explosion not just to the environment but to political stability and the economy. The currency and gravity of this topic cannot be overstated; regardless of their political leanings, readers will sit up and listen. Highly recommended for all library collections; expect heavy demand. [Audio clip available through us.macmillan.com.--Ed.]--Risa Getman, Hendrick Hudson Free Lib., Montrose, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
ONE Where Birds Don't Fly "German engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothing." Advertising slogan used on a billboard in South Africa by Daimler to promote its Smart "forfour" compact car In June 2004, I was visiting London with my daughter Orly, and one evening we went to see the play Billy Elliot at a theater near Victoria Station. During intermission, I was standing up, stretching my legs in the aisle next to my seat, when a stranger approached and asked me, "Are you Mr. Friedman?" When I nodded yes, he introduced himself: "My name is Emad Tinawi. I am a Syrian-American working for Booz Allen," the consulting firm. Tinawi said that while he disagreed with some of the columns I had written, particularly on the Middle East, there was one column he especially liked and still kept. "Which one?" I asked with great curiosity. "The one called 'Where Birds Don't Fly,'" he said. For a moment, I was stumped. I remembered writing that headline, but I couldn't remember the column or the dateline. Then he reminded me: It was about the newpost-9/11U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. For years, the U.S. consulate in Istanbul was headquartered in the Palazzo Corpi, a grand and distinctive old building in the heart of the city's bustling business district, jammed between the bazaars, the domed mosques, and the jumble of Ottoman and modern architecture. Built in 1882, and bought by the U.S. government twenty-five years later, Palazzo Corpi was bordered on three sides by narrow streets and was thoroughly woven into the fabric of Istanbul life. It was an easy place for Turks to get a visa, to peruse the library, or to engage with an American diplomat. But as part of the general security upgrade for U.S. embassies and consulates in the post-9/11 world, it was decided to close the consulate at Palazzo Corpi, and in June 2003 a new U.S. consulate was opened in Istinye, an outlying district about twelve miles away from the center of the city. "The new 22-acre facilitynearly 15 times as big as the old consulatewas built on a solid rock hill," a Federal Times article reported (April 25, 2005), adding that "State now requires buildings to have protective walls that are at least 100 feet away from embassies and consulates. Those walls and barriers also must protect against explosions and ramming attacks from vehicles, and they must be difficult to climb. Guard booths are placed at the perimeter of facilities, and windows and doors are bulletproof and resist forced entries. The new buildings are also strong enough to resist most earthquakes and bombs." They are also strong enough to deter most visitors, friends, and allies. In fact, when I first set eyes on the new consulate in 2005, what struck me most was how much it looked like a maximum-security prisonwithout the charm. All that was missing was a moat filled with alligators and a sign that said in big red letters: "Attention! You are now approaching the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. Any sudden movements and you will be shot without warning. all visitors welcome." They could have filmed the Turkish prison movie Midnight Express there. But here's a hard truth: Some U.S. diplomats are probably alive today thanks to this fortress. Because on November 20, 2003, as President George W. Bush was in London meeting with then prime minister Tony Blair, and about six months after the new U.S. consulate in Istanbul had been opened, Turkish Muslim terrorists detonated truck bombs at the HSBC bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing thirty people, including Britain's consul general, and wounding at least four hundred others. The bomb-ravaged British mission was just a short walk from the Palazzo Corpi. One of the terrorists captured after the attack reportedly told Turkish police that his group had wanted to blow up the new U.S. consulate, but when they checked out the facility in Istinye, they found it impregnable. A senior U.S. diplomat in Istanbul told me more of the story: According to Turkish security officials, the terrorist said the new U.S. consulate was so secure, "they don't let birds fly" there. I never forgot that image: It was so well guarded they don't even let birds fly there . . . (That point was reinforced on July 9, 2008, when Turkish police outside the consulate killed three terrorists apparently trying to breach its walls.) Tinawi and I swapped impressions about the corrosive impact such security restrictions were having on foreigners' perceptions of America and on America's perceptions of itself. As an Arab-American, he was clearly bothered by this, and he could tell from my column that I was too. Because a place where birds don't fly is a place where people don't mix, ideas don't get sparked, friendships don't get forged, stereotypes don't get broken, collaboration doesn't happen, trust doesn't get built, and freedom doesn't ring. That is not the kind of place we want America to be. That is not the kind of place we can afford America to be. An America living in a defensive crouch cannot fully tap the vast rivers of idealism, innovation, volunteerism, and philanthropy that still flow through our nation. And it cannot play the vital role it has long played for the rest of the worldas a beacon of hope and the country that can always be counted on to lead the world in response to whatever is the most important challenge of the day. We need that Americaand we need to be that America--more than ever today. This is a book about why. The core argument is very simple: America has a problem and the world has a problem. America's problem is that it has lost its way in recent yearspartly because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have let build up over the last three decades, bad habits that have weakened our society's ability and willingness to take on big challenges. The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable. In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change. How we address these interwoven global trends will determine a lot about the quality of life on earth in the twenty-first century. I am convinced that the best way for America to solve its big problem the best way for America to get its "groove" back is for us to take the lead in solving the world's big problem. In a world that is getting hot, flat, and crowded, the task of creating the tools, systems, energy sources, and ethics that will allow the planet to grow in cleaner, more sustainable ways is going to be the biggest challenge of our lifetime. But this challenge is actually an opportunity for America. If we take it on, it will revive America at home, reconnect America abroad, and retool America for tomorrow. America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems. When we do just one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, we are greater than the sum of our partsmuch greater. But it's not just an opportunity, either: it's also a test. It's a test of whether we are able and willing to lead. Whether you love us or hate us, whether you believe in American power or you don't, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded has created a challenge so daunting that it is impossible to imagine a meaningful solution without America really stepping up. "We are either going to be losers or heroesthere's no room anymore for anything in between," says Rob Watson, CEO of EcoTech International and one of the best environmental minds in America. Yes, either we are going to rise to the level of leadership, innovation, and collaboration that is required, or everybody is going to losebig. Just coasting along and doing the same old things is not an option any longer. We need a whole new approach. As they say in Texas: "If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got."The simple name for the new project I am proposing is "Code Green." What "red" was to America in the 1950s and 1960sa symbol of the overarching Communist threat, the symbol that was used to mobilize our country to build up its military, its industrial base, its highways, its railroads, ports, and airports, its educational institutions, and its scientific capabilities to lead the world in defense of freedom we need "green" to be for today's America. Unfortunately, after 9/11, instead of replacing red with green, President George W. Bush replaced red with "Code Red" and all the other crazy colors of the Department of Homeland Security's warning system. It's time to scrap them all and move to Code Green. Of course, I am not calling for a return to anti-Communist witch hunts and McCarthyismjust to the seriousness and determination to build a society that can face the overarching threat of our day. For me, going Code Green means making America the World's leader in innovating clean power and energy-efficiency systems and inspiring an ethic of conservation toward the natural world, which is increasingly imperiled. We're going to need both massive breakthroughs in clean power and a deeper respect for the world's forests, oceans, and biodiversity hot spots if we're going to thrive in this new age. The first half of this book is a diagnosis of the unique energy, climate, and biodiversity challenges the world faces. The second half is an argument about how we can meet those challenges. I would be less than truthful, though, if I said I think America, as it operates today, is ready for this mission. We are not. Right now, we don't have the focus and persistence to take on something really big, where the benefits play out over the long term. But I believe that all that could change with the right leadership local, state, and federalproperly framing how much we have to gain by rising to this moment and how much we have to lose by failing to do so. Americans intuit that we're on the wrong track and that we need a course correction, and fast. Indeed, when I think of our situation, I am reminded of the movie The Leopard, based on the novel of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It is set in nineteenth-century Italy, at a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil. The main character is the Sicilian prince Don Fabrizio of Salina (played by Burt Lancaster). Don Fabrizio understands that he and his family will have to adapt if they want the House of Salina to retain its leadership in a new era, where social forces from below are challenging the traditional power elites. Nevertheless, Prince Salina is bitter and uncompromising"We were the leopards, the lions; those who take our place will be jackals and sheep."The wisest advice he gets comes from his nephew Tancredi (played by Alain Delon), who marries a wealthy shopkeeper's daughter from the new moneyed middle class, and along the way cautions his uncle: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."And so it is with America. The era we are entering will be one of enormous social, political, and economic changedriven in large part from above, from the sky, from Mother Nature. If we want things to stay as they arethat is, if we want to maintain our technological, economic, and moral leadership and a habitable planet, rich with flora and fauna, leopards and lions, and human communities that can grow in a sustainable waythings will have to change around here, and fast. Excerpted from Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L Friedman Copyright (c) 2008 by Thomas L. Friedman Published in September 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher. Excerpted from Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--And How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
