Thomas Friedman, the influential American commentator, addressed Intelligence Squared on his new book, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded. Why the world needs a green revolution and how we can renew our global future.’
A star turn visited Intelligence Squared on 13th October. Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and columnist on the New York Times, came to discuss his new book ‘Hot Flat and Crowded’, an analysis of the global challenges of the 21st century. The topic seemed spectacularly tedious but Friedman caught our interest immediately with his unusual stance. He’s both deeply sceptical of America and devoutly patriotic. His language is chatty and challenging. ‘We’ve lost our groove,’ he said blaming 9/11 for transforming the US into an exporter of fear rather of hope. When he leaves his home town of Washington DC he has to ‘pass through a dozen metal detectors,’ which is fine, he says, provided ‘the last one leads to a great project worthy of our inspirational capacities, not another metal detector.’
The ‘great project’ – Energy Technology – matters more than the war on terror which he analysis as a straightforward military contradiction. America subsidises both sides. Tax dollars fund US armed forces while American energy purchases fund Middle-East terror.
Unlike most green activists Friedman is a natural entertainer. He never uses clichés but freshens every aspect of the debate with inventive new coinages. Rather than ‘global warming’, he talks of ‘global weirding’, dangerously unpredictable weather events where ‘the hots will be hotter, the dries drier, the rains longer, the snows thicker.’ To those who question climate change he says, ‘you can jump out of an 80-storey building and for 79 floors you think you’re flying.’ This is Friedman’s great talent, a knack for creating graphic images that translate complex ideas into simple, concrete language.
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