Celebrating Earth Day with Tom Friedman
An interview with The ‘Stache pre-pie-in-the-face 15
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Posted 2:20 PM on 28 Apr 2008
by Nathan Wyeth -
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Nathan Wyeth is a junior at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He is active with the Sierra Student Coalition, the student-run arm of the Sierra Club.
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sunflower Posted 7:01 am
28 Apr 2008
Has Tom been successful in the cloak room?
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Jonas Posted 7:14 am
28 Apr 2008
Exactly!
Buy local and altermondialism are bogus and dangerous.
We need more globalisation, with a critical component added: a clear price on ecosystem services and balanced by globalised social rules. Globalisation enhances political ties, communication through goods and services, it knits us together and gives us power to change capitalism for the better.
I warned against the "localist" ideology ages ago, ever since I witnessed how many farmers in the South are dependent on producing for the North.
I told the localist loonies: if you really want to buy inefficient and carbon-heavy local food, then go ahead, but please buy global biofuels instead. Else you are killing millions of people.
Luckily, many are beginning to understand the logic (also, because a lot of research shows that buying local is often pretty energy and carbon inefficient).
Localism and autarky are crazy, dangerous ideas. All autarkist experiments and upsurges have led to catastrophies (Zimbabwe is perhaps the most recent example).
Energy inter-dependence, globalisation from the left, and much more stress on technology transfers in the name of the planetary Good, - that's what we need. Not localism.
Localism is the new reactionary force of our time. We must fight it with all we've got.
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lorna salzman Posted 11:13 am
28 Apr 2008
Relocalization is the only thing that will save us
The guy who attacks the concept of "buy local" and thinks the globalization model we have today is just and ecological is blowing smoke and probably makes his living building SUVs or working for Exxon. The idea of relocalization is to wean undeveloped agrarian economies AWAY from the death grip of exports of raw materials and resources and back towards subsistence models that feed local people first, create sustainable local economies, and serve communities and regions. The concept of small scale production and industry was brilliantly promoted by E.F. Schumacher, who was not a neoLuddite but a realist and a humane one at that. Once undeveloped agrarian societies are hooked into the corporate and financial networks, whose rules are made by THEM for THEIR benefit, not the poor, they have lost the whole game. Getting off synthetic pesticides, genetically modified seeds and plants (which are an excuse for total corporate control from seed to the kitchen table) and outside of the WTO and NAFTA are the only hopes of the poor. Once they shake free of them they are doing the equivalent of moving from fossil and nuclear fuels, centrally controlled for profit and deadly economic growth and overconsumption, and into the renewable energy era, where they are no longer dependent on irresponsible and unaccountable institutions and forces. When the global warming crunch comes, only those communities with local food and energy supplies will survive. The sooner we relocalize, the more insurance we have for the future of our society and for social justice.
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jcutter Posted 1:20 am
29 Apr 2008
Free market got us in this mess
It's a sad day when Thomas Friedman is touted as a spokesperson for the environment. For one thing, he has shamelessly promoted the US war on Iraq. There is nothing worse for the environment than war. Specifically, the US war(s) on Iraq have had a devastating impact on the environment of Iraq, leaving a wasteland of depleted uranium dust and other pollutants.
Second, for TF to suggest that the solution to global warming rests with the free market suggests to me that he is either dishonest or not very observant. We have global warming today because of untrammeled capitalist industrial development. Free market solutions such as cap and trade mean that governments and industry get to decide how much carbon is an acceptable level of emissions, and then they are allowed to buy and sell the right to pollute. Where is the voice of the poor and working people of the world in all this?
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nycowboy Posted 5:51 am
29 Apr 2008
Friedman
When I read the first few chapters of Friedman's The World is Flat I was concerned about what he said -- he often over-emphasizes technology and information over reality. But then I read more and got a different impression.
Localism makes a lot of sense for heavy materials that we consume a lot of in our society. It's insane to move heavy and low value things like rocks, fluids like milk, food like vegetables, and even worst beef cattle and large livestock, and energy (oil, coal, and electricity), steel building materials, far across the world. That takes a lot of energy and is expensive now. It will be even worst in the future as energy gets expensive.
Globalism makes a lot of sense for rare, but compact materials that exist in only one part of the world or can only be made with very capital intensive equipment. Electronics comes to mind. High-tech equipment can only be made in very specialized factories, and it requires very specialized materials.
Globalism, even in era of extremely high oil prices makes sense for service-based economy. If the work can be digitized, it doesn't take too much more oil to move the information to China or India then it does to move the information down the street. In other words, little more energy is consumed to have your taxes, bookkeeping, or call center done online across the street or China.
Friedman makes another important point in his book. The Chinese and Indians, are going to be adopting the American lifestyle in massively growing numbers. There is no way to stop it -- if we do it, they are going to want to do it -- and with their new found wealth, will do it.
Within the next decade 100 or 200 million Chinese will be hoping in their SUVs and driving to suburban office park. There is no stopping this fact, and it's going to strain oil supplies to greatest extent ever known to man. It's going to force oil prices up dramatically, and force the Chinese and Indians to implement the world's toughest environmental laws to make their world somewhat livable (because they will have world's biggest pollution problem on their hands -- far worst then today).
The Chinese and Indians will have to use energy much more efficiently then Americans ever had to in the past, but the sheer population will create world-wide problems like never before seen.
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Summer Rayne Oakes Posted 11:25 am
29 Apr 2008
Friedman not at the pulse
Friedman is not at the pulse of the youth climate change movement obviously. The lobbying and action has already started. Wake up!
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:27 pm
29 Apr 2008
"buy local."
Really?
As in, with media?
As in, should we not read the New York Times here in Kent Washington (it's probably a good idea).
Texeme.Construct(Participant)
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nancylaplaca Posted 3:13 pm
29 Apr 2008
Gee, Tom, sorry you missed ecology class!
Wow - how sad. One of the highest-paid journalists in the world and this is all he can add to the discussion?
Generally, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, as Tom says. However, the activists in this country who stopped 60 coal plants -- especially gasified coal, which Big Green is still pushing -- wree not at the table. Those plants were stopped because ordinary Americans are waking up and Smelling the Planet, and realizing that global warming is serious, and we'd better do something about it.
The two biggest source of GHGs, obviously, are transportation and coal-fired power. Like James Hansen says, we must stop using coal for electricity. We can't build more new plants, and we need to start thinking about how to shut down existing plants in an organized manner.
So for all the hand-wringing by politicos and Big Green, the utilities are still bellying up to the bar with big coal plants in their back pockets. We could run this country a couple times over with wind and concentrating solar, and get serious about distributed generation, but that wouldn't make Dominion or Xcel or NRG or Exelon rich.
Or we could invest in -- public transportation! Never mind that we'll leave most everyone high and dry, pumping out 20 pounds of CO2 (and a host of other toxics) for every gallon. And each gallon will cost dearly. When we add up how much money we've wasted on the U.S. road system, traffic accidents, deaths, cancer, pollution, brain damage to the poorest children in our communities -- it will be as staggering as this useless war.
Then there's natural gas. With utilities unable to build more new coal, they're turning to drilled gas (I don't want to call it "natural" gas). Drilled gas has gone up in price 15.8%/year for the past decade, and we are probably at the beginning of a long and steep upward climb, just like oil. If drilled gas was the equivalent price of oil, it would cost $18/MMBtu. My utility, Xcel Energy, estimates that drilled gas will cost -- get this -- $6.50 in 2013! That's ridiculous. We'll be lucky if it's less than $15 -- and it may be much, much higher.
And although oil declines -- generally -- at a steady 2-6%/year, gas declines rapidly -- it's called the 'gas cliff.' Well depletion in the U.S. is 28%/year; which means that each well is depleted in 3-5 years.
The U.S. peaked in dry gas production in 2001 (see the Energy INformation AGency's website on 'natural' gas, and click on the production charts); we import 20% of our gas from Canada, and Canada estimates that in 5-7 years it will not be able to export any gas.
So what are we going to do?
I wish I had faith in our government, in our leaders, in our main-street papers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But we can't even face the reality of finite and therefore depleting resources, or acidified oceans, or what happens after the Amazon collapses.
I was at a party a few weeks ago of yuppie middle-aged women like myself and someone made the comment that global warming is no different than, say, reproductive rights or civil rights was in the 1960's (never mind that racism is simply more subtle these days). Hello? Species extinction, massive ecosystem collapse, rising seas and abandoned cities are the equivalent of women's rights? I've known a few male chauvinists, but that's nothing compared with mass starvation and hundreds of millions of refugees worldwide.
And we did it. With our SUVs and our big houses and our inability to look at ourselves. Cumulative emissions land smack-dab on the good old U.S.A.
I can't help but look around and think about the fun years I had, hiking and camping around the southwest. It's hard to believe that the very foundation of our existence -- our stable world -- is at risk. And I can hardly believe sometimes that it's happened on my watch, in my lifetime.
So after lamenting that Tom didn't get to take ecology in school, he's had to "catch up."
Too bad we can't take Tom's bloated salary and give it to real journalists.
Nancy LaPlaca www.energyjustice.net/coal/igcc
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nancylaplaca Posted 3:15 pm
29 Apr 2008
Tom Friedman is a Symbol for Greenwashing
Maybe Tom can work for Wal-Mart or "clean" coal.
Nancy LaPlaca www.energyjustice.net/coal/igcc
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KarenLOrr Posted 12:49 am
30 Apr 2008
The Greenwash Guerrillas
The Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman on Earth Day
From the Greenwash Guerrillas website:
"New York Times columnist, war-monger, and Greenwasher extraordinaire Thomas Friedman gets pied while speaking at Brown University last week."
Read on for the Greenwash Guerrillas press release and video.
http://greenwashguerrillas.wordpress.com/
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amazingdrx Posted 12:55 am
30 Apr 2008
Fried
Fried man, in biodiesl after sniffing ethanol fumes and getting a tan in a nuclear reactor. Oh yeah and sequestering coal GHG in his lower intestines. CCS is real!
Pie in the sky..in your face!!!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jason D Scorse Posted 2:50 am
30 Apr 2008
Friedman makes a lot of sense....
his contributions here are much better than in foreign policy!! Check out his op-ed in today's NYT- it's quite good. I'm not a big fan, but his motto:
"Green is the new red, white, and blue"
is brilliant.
J.S.
I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.
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greenwashguerrillas Posted 6:53 am
30 Apr 2008
death to the corporate machine
Colonel Custard of the Greenwash Guerrillas here.
I pied him, and he deserved it.
I am not negating his brilliance - but what he does with such brilliance.
Green is the new Red White and Blue is a treatise on how "green" is what is needed to save US imperialism - it is a plan B for the war on iraq.
That is the central point, and it is unfortunately a point that many other corporate-minded environmentalists agree with him on, explicitly or implicitly. "save the planet" really means "save our empire"
Just because Friedman talks about "those without electricity" doesn't mean he actually gives a damn about them. The World Bank is supposedly mean to alleviate poverty, they talk about inequality all the time. But you can't listen to rhetoric, look at policies and their effects.
Yes, friedman supports "clean" coal. And nuclear. After he tells Iraqis to "suck on this [the occupation]" he tells nevadans (Western Shoshone in particular) to "suck it up" and take nuclear waste.
The man is a rabid war-monger and racist imperialist. His new green rhetoric does not change that, it is just a more effective and masked means of doing the very same.
And finally - in response to the need to "put a price on ecosystem services" (comment by "new - Exactly!")...
This is the critical piece. this is the reality behind cap-and-trade mumbo jumbo. This is the new fronteir of capitalism... in the name of "making corporations pay" and "compensating for externalities", the corporate plunderers are using this rhetoric to justify PUTTING A PRICE ON EVERYTHING... they put a price on the atmosphere (actually, the earth's carbon cycling capacity) and this means that they OWN it. Did putting a price on land through the introduction of colonial private property "save" the land? Has privitizing water helped Bolivians? Has privitizing genetic sequences helped the indigenous medicine people whose knowledge was stolen and copywrited?
This is insidious, and with a new green cloak the corporate rulers of the planet are opening whole new frontiers of accumulation, exacerbating inequalities while continuing their plunder of the human and natural worlds.
They need to be stopped, and NOW - if there is any chance for a liveable future
Ta ta,
Colonel Custard,
Greenwash Guerrillas.
http://www.greenwashguerrillas.org
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amazingdrx Posted 12:14 pm
01 May 2008
Right arm Custard!
All these horrible positions on energy, yet JS the economist thinks his 4 year old phrase is clever? Hmmm.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 12:16 pm
01 May 2008
Put a price
On everything, so hedge funds can trade it. The fried earth theory.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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