[Peace-discuss] Fw: Review: Hot, Flat, and Crowded

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Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 2:00 PM
Subject: Review: Hot, Flat, and Crowded


> Book Review
>
>    Hot, Flat, and Crowded By Thomas Friedman. New
>    York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. $27.95.
>    Pp. 438.
>
> By Jerry Harris
> SolidarityEconomy.Net
> December 15, 2009
>
> http://www.solidarityeconomy.net/2009/12/15/yankee-doodle-ecologist-tom-friedman-and-the-green-revolution/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
> Thomas Friedman is always the head cheerleader for the
> next big thing. At first it was globalization and now
> it's the green revolution. Friedman's instincts are
> good, it's just his analysis and politics are lacking.
> There are certainly valuable and interesting insights
> in his work, but his adolescent enthusiasm for
> capitalism often turns his critique to shallow
> propaganda.
>
> The book's title, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is a good
> indicator as to how Friedman understands environmental
> problems. Underline that word crowded because the book
> takes us on a Malthusian ride through the Third World.
> It's overpopulation, not capitalism and its need for
> every expanding accumulation that is destroying the
> world's environment.
>
> Friedman marches us through China, India, Brazil and
> Nigeria offering a myopic view that only occasional
> refers to the developed countries and their use of
> energy and resources. When it comes to energy markets
> transnationals such as Exxon and Shell disappear as
> does any discussion of imperialism and its history in
> the Middle East. Instead Friedman targets
> "petrodictorships" and "Sheikhs.with bags of cash"
> indoctrinating madrassa students to "breed like
> rabbits" and "swarm" over the Islamic world. (p. 88)
>
> In conjunction with this racist trash, Friedman
> advocates the green revolution as a matter of national
> security, joining those like James Woolsey, former CIA
> director, who call themselves "environmental hawks." He
> makes the case for green technology like a salesman
> pitching venture capitalists. In the chapter "Green Is
> the New Red, White, and Blue" Friedman argues that
> companies who invent and deploy new technologies will
> have a "dominant place in the global economy." (p.171)
> Exporting green technology will be the new "currency of
> power" and the "mother of all markets." (p172) "It's
> all about national power.what could be more patriotic,
> capitalistic and geostrategic than that?" (173) Leave
> it up to Friedman to make saving the planet a project
> of U.S. imperialism.
>
> Like others who understand globalization within a
> narrow national strategy the author finds himself in a
> trap. Friedman turns to First Solar, headquartered in
> Arizona with facilities in Ohio, as a leading example
> of a green U.S. corporation. But because Germany leads
> in solar technology CEO Mike Ahearn says, "First Solar
> is to a large extent a German success story.we purchase
> over half of the equipment used in our production lines
> from German manufacturers and we count suppliers in
> Easter Germany as among our most important business
> partners." (pp. 389-90)
>
> So much for U.S. dominance in a global market where
> technology and capital are transnational and
> borderless. Yet Friedman seems to be in séance with
> Rudyard Kipling's ghost, voicing a new version of the
> "white man's burden" now dressed up as green
> imperialism. For Friedman U.S. dominance benefits the
> planet, saves the world's poor, and makes an
> Americanized global middle class possible. He believes
> everyone should have more energy, just as long as the
> U.S. sells it.
>
> Nevertheless, the author is smart enough to understand
> the limits of "the ecological logic of capitalism." (p.
> 57) Friedman calls for a fundamental redesign of the
> economy and in the second half of the book on "How We
> Move Forward" he makes use of Mao's famous quote that
> "Revolution is not a dinner party." In this section
> Friedman's neo-Keynesian ideas emerge with his broad
> advocacy of government directed policies to enable
> corporations and markets to make sweeping changes. This
> is not old style Keynesianism focused on job creation,
> a social contract and national markets, but
> governmental policy for global competitive supremacy.
>
> It's in this area where Friedman scores his best
> points. He advocates a serious and deep structural
> change to our entire energy and transportation systems
> using a variety of regulations, performance standards,
> set prices, taxes, incentives and disincentives. As he
> states, "green will be the standard.It will be the new
> normal-nothing else will be available, nothing else
> will be possible." (p296) If previously Friedman acted
> as Silicon Valley's best pitchman, he now joins Al Gore
> as salesman for green entrepreneurial capitalism.
>
> As with Paul Hawkins and Amory Lovins, Friedman
> contends that capitalism can renew itself by building a
> sustainable green economy. They have no doubt that with
> the right government policies and market incentives a
> historic transformation is possible. To Friedman's
> credit he admits for the green movement to make
> progress it needs "a million people on the Mall." (p.
> 399) Other environmental experts, like Marxists John
> Bellamy Foster and Joel Kovel, argue that such a
> transformation is impossible within the confines of
> capitalism, even with a mass movement. In their view
> capitalism by its very nature needs to constantly
> expand, using ever more resources that destroy our
> environment in the ongoing process of accumulation.
>
> While I have sympathy for this view, Marxists have too
> often declared capitalism's imminent demise. Such
> predictions are based on perceived irresolvable
> economic contradictions and the inability of capitalism
> to grow further without causing a permanent crisis that
> would destroy society. Friedman's vision of growth is
> one that reduces inputs and energy, so that competition
> and profits turn on a qualitatively different type of
> sustainable expansion.
>
> One problem with this debate is that Friedman and Gore
> reach millions, while Foster and Kovel speak to a much
> smaller audience. But in the sense that Friedman is
> making people aware that we face a deeply serious
> ecological crisis he helps lay the basis to consider
> many different alternatives beyond his own. Friedman
> doesn't go beyond where Gore has already taken the
> public, nor does he add much new. But considering few
> mainstream elites have fully embraced the need for a
> "revolutionary" ecological change we shouldn't begrudge
> Friedman his place. Neither do we need to endorse his
> views, but rather engage in an environmental debate
> that will determine the direction of our future.
>
> [Jerry Harris is a professor at DeVry University,
> Chicago. He is author of Dialectics of Globalization
> (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and, together with Carl
> Davidson, CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age
> ( http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker ).]
>
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