Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman
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Pub. Ed.
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Softcover
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Publication date: September 08, 2008
Thomas L. Friedman is one of our brave new world’s bravest thinkers. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award winner, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and perpetually bestselling author of such paradigm-shifting books as The World Is Flat and Longitudes and Attitudes, Friedman has explored the perils and potential of our increasingly globalized world with a prophet’s fervor and insight. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, he’s taking on one of Earth’s most pressing problems—the climate crisis—and arguing that in saving the world, America can also save itself.
In this illuminating account, Friedman explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the unprecedented connectivity and commerce enabled by the Internet have brought climate and energy issues to the forefront like never before. But the Green Revolution needed to harness these forces for the good of the planet—and our economy—has yet to ignite. Calling for a World War II-level mobilization to create the clean technology breakthroughs that will power America throughout the rest of the century, Friedman appeals for the birth of “the Greenest Generation”—lest this hot, flat, crowded world get hotter still.
From Hot, Flat, and Crowded
“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 played for more than two hundred years for the rest of the world—as 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 America—and 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 years—partly 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 new economic, intellectual, environmental, and geopolitical 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.”
