If you're not yet convinced that climate change is real or needs urgent and radical attention, this vision of a flat world -- with America on top -- may be able to change your mind. Maybe, thanks to huge sales, this book will able to open a lot of minds that needed opening; and that would be a good thing. Unfortunately, it won't open them quite far enough. While faulting others for not confronting the tough issues around climate change, Thomas Friedman (TF) avoids many of them himself.
Other reviews summarize some of the book's main themes. This long review will deal with some of TF's more striking arguments, good and bad, that most others have not yet commented on.
A. GOOD POINTS
Some points I especially liked: It's great that TF is so explicit about his exasperation at magazine articles and books offering glib solutions like "205 easy ways to go green." He'd prefer our leaders "propose the one or two hard ways that could actually make a difference" (@ 400). His proposal for how a Presidential candidate might defend the idea of a carbon tax (@265f) is what we ought to be hearing now, instead of "Drill, baby, drill!" His description of why the US military is enthusiastic about going green (@ 317-322) is fascinating. And he bravely makes strong arguments that government regulation can be a good thing in appropriate circumstances.
B. THE POINT OF GOING GREEN IS ... REGIME CHANGE?
One curious feature of TF's argument is its emphasis on America's going green as a means of promoting change in other countries. TF's "Laws of Petropolitics" (Ch. 4) purport to show how "freedom" (or sometimes "the pace of freedom" (@96)) in certain oil-producing countries waxes and wanes inversely with the price of oil. (I won't dwell on the speciousness of the graphs, which use undefined units and misleadingly truncated axes for "freedom," which is sometimes political and sometimes economic.) America should reduce its demand for oil because of our "need to drive reform in the Arab-Muslim world" (@108; I suppose that means we think non-Arab Iran is OK as is).
Moreover, new American technologies will reduce "energy poverty" in poor countries and enable the next Thomas Edison or Sally Ride who may be living there (Ch. 7 & @164). And the Chinese leadership will give its people freedom of speech because of our threats to "outgreen" that country (Ch. 16, esp. @ 367). Aside from these notes of noblesse oblige, TF's vision of other countries is only as competitors to America, not people with whom we should be cooperating (e.g., "America wins! America wins! America wins!" @ 242).
What does America get out of this? The first chapter promises to show how going green will lead to "nation-building in America" (@9). But TF never returns to that topic; the impacts on America that he describes all seem to be economic. He also promises we'll get "more and more knowledge-intensive green-collar technology jobs - which are more difficult to outsource" (@23). What do these turn out to be? Construction jobs installing solar panels and retrofitting buildings (@338).
C. GREEN'S IMPACT ON INCOME INEQUALITY
TF seems blind about the issue of income inequality, especially within nations. Only four pages of the book (< 1% of the text) even come close to talking about income inequality in America; these take the form of an interview with a community activist from Oakland, CA (@335-339). Those construction jobs are the punch line, presented as a boon to the urban poor. How about the rest of the book?
(1) TF regales us with a long utopian fantasy about the snazzy technology and perfectly working markets (unlike any in real life) of the "Energy Internet" (@224-236). He imagines "you" as having a real estate development job that you can telecommute to most days of the week. Too bad for folks who have manufacturing or minimum wage jobs, like the folks who flip your burgers; I guess he expects they won't read the book. Moreover, TF is excited by the idea that someday we'll all lease our household appliances instead of owning them (@71). A society of a few who own and the many who rent, even at the most basic levels of daily life? Sounds less like science fiction and more like a Charles Dickens novel.
(2) TF enthuses about imposing a $5-$10 per gallon tax on gasoline, and using that money to offset payroll taxes (@262). Let's check the math. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I went through about 20 gallons of gas per week - and I had a home office. TF's gas tax would have cost me $5K-$10K per year (to say nothing of higher pre-tax prices per gallon). Plenty of folks commute more than 1 hour per day, because their jobs don't pay them enough to afford to live in the communities where they work; but let's assume they use only as much gas as I did. According to the 2008 US tax tables, a head of household earning even $43K won't have $10K of tax to offset. Even a married couple filing jointly with income over $60K won't have that much payroll tax - but they might have to pay the gas tax for two cars.
(3) How about the day-trading class? According to TF, stock bubbles "have actually been a key driver of America's remarkable record of economic growth and innovation" (@259). The "overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic cable" left the infrastructure for low-cost Internet services after the bubble's 'pop'(@258). BTW, as I recall, that pop also resulted in a huge wave of job loss. It also wiped out the small investors who didn't have privileged access to IPOs, or the inside information to lead them to bail out ahead of the game. I suppose TF likes neutron bombs, too. And despite this, Americans' Internet access speeds are still way slower than those enjoyed in Japan and Korea.
(4) To be fair, TF is almost as blind about the poor in foreign countries. His fantasy beneficiary of green technology in the developing world is "Senhor Verde" (a Brazilian 'Mr. Green'), who has a 1,000 acre farm, with high-tech tractors and sprinkler system. But the mean size of a farm in Brazil is < 150 acres; and as a mean, that number is inflated upwards by some megafarms. Roughly 40% of Brazilian farms are under 10 (ten) acres. In Africa and many Asian countries, that percentage is closer to 80%-90%. See, e.g., the paper "Farm size" by Eastwood & al. of University of Sussex (2004), available in draft online. Bottom line: when TF talks about Mr. Green, he's talking about a rich dude.
TF's vision for the foreign poor is data centers set up by outsourcing companies, such as one he saw in a village in India (@166-169). One of his interviewees tells him, "[I]n the village, no one gives up these jobs." I'll bet. But keeping their jobs isn't necessarily up to them. Outsourcing work is especially vulnerable to being moved around the globe, according to the whims of the market forces that TF extols. See, e.g., Andrew Ross's outstanding "Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade" (2006).
D. UNASKED QUESTIONS AND UNPURSUED CONCLUSIONS
The deepest problem is that TF doesn't question his key assumptions or pursue his arguments to their logical conclusions. Especially, he doesn't question whether American-style market capitalism might be part of the problem, beyond the fact that it relies on heat-based energy sources.
(1) GROWTH & GDP: "I start from the bedrock principle that we as a global society need more and more growth, because without growth there is no human development and those in poverty will never escape it" (@186). Growth in what? "Economic growth" usually means growth in GDP, and TF never indicates he means something else (see also his discussion of China @ 345f). The usual assumption (not stated by TF) is that higher GDP per capita (GDP/C) is associated with higher "welfare" or "well-being".
TF says "Too many environmentalists oppose *any* growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty" (@194). This is painting with a broad brush. First of all, GDP/C numbers don't tell you anything about how wealth is distributed. As Warren Buffett gets richer, our mean GDP/C goes up, but that doesn't mean your income goes up. In fact, check Wikipedia on "Median household income": although US GDP/C grew 67% since 1980, median real household income went up by only about 15%. Real median income is lower now than in 1999 - i.e., at least half of us are worse off since then, despite growth. Second, TF's blind eye overlooks that income inequality has been growing within nations, including the US. Based on US Census Bureau's computed Gini Index for 2007 (46.3), we're by far the most unequal of all developed countries. So it's not obvious exactly what growing GDP or GDP/C does for the poor.
Moreover, TF doesn't mention that GDP/C can grow because of bad stuff, such as the costs of treating disease and cleaning up pollution - not really well-being at all. Or that the supposed relationship between GDP/C and happiness as measured in surveys is at most a correlation -- not a causation, as TF's comment suggests. (Or that whether such a correlation exists at all is highly contested among researchers, and that even the papers arguing most strongly for it ignore other obvious factors, such the relationship between happiness and recovery from a devastating war.) Or that despite growth, income inequality can lead to unhappiness because of perceived relative differences, even if everyone's income is improving in an absolute sense.
Since so much of the book's attention is on America, not a "global society," you'd think that TF might specifically address the question of how growth benefits Americans. But aside from mentioning that to turn off growth would be "political suicide" for politicians (@64), he's mum on the issue.
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Friedman: I think there are two approaches. There has to be more understanding of the basic unfairness they feel. They feel like we sat down, had the hors d'oeuvres, ate the entrée, pretty much finished off the dessert, invited them for tea and coffee and then said, "Let's split the bill." So I understand the big sense of unfairness--they feel that now that they have a chance to grow and reach with large numbers a whole new standard of living, we're basically telling them, "Your growth, and all the emissions it would add, is threatening the world's climate." At the same time, what I say to them--what I said to young Chinese most recently when I was just in China is this: Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." And I say to them, "Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better. In other words, I know this is unfair, but I am here to tell you that in a world that's hot, flat and crowded, ET--energy technology--is going to be as big an industry as IT--information technology. Maybe even bigger. And who claims that industry--whose country and whose companies dominate that industry--I think is going to enjoy more national security, more economic security, more economic growth, a healthier population, and greater global respect, for that matter, as well. So you can sit back and say, it's not fair that we have to compete in this new industry, that we should get to grow dirty for a while, or you can do what you did in telecommunications, and that is try to leap-frog us. And that's really what I'm saying to them: this is a great economic opportunity. The game is still open. I want my country to win it--I'm not sure it will.
