For years, scientists have pondered the mysterious but persistent connection between ecological wisdom and the follicular phenomenon that is the mustache. Is it the ‘stache that produces the wisdom? Or does the wisdom push its bearer toward the ‘stache? Early research focused on Amory Lovins, the efficiency guru who pioneered the green ‘stache in the ‘70s; while those studies proved inconclusive, recent years have brought an avalanche of evidence: green biz wiz Joel Makower, newly converted “geogreen” Tom Friedman, deft dealmaker Henry Waxman ... the list goes on. Global ‘staching skeptic? Check it out.

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At a Grist gathering in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, we were pleased to host New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for a chat on the state of green. Our intrepid video expert was on hand to tape the event.

Friedman released Hot, Flat, and Crowded way back in October 2008 -- before the worst of the economic crash, before Obama, before the GM bankruptcy, before Waxman-Markey ... Lord it's been a long year! He's been updating the book for a paperback release in November, so I kicked things off by asking him how his thinking has evolved and how he's framing the book's update. Here's what he had to say:

Next, I asked him about globalization. He's known as a leading proponent of neoliberal trade policies that open global trade, capital, and resource flows, but many enviros these days wonder whether that go-go economic acceleration has contributed to our current environmental woes. Folks like Bill McKibben are questioning whether increased material wealth is making us happier or healthier any more.

Here's Friedman's response:

I want to thank Friedman again for taking the time to visit with us and for his always interesting and provocative thoughts on the issues at hand. As he said, he and Grist have a "spirited friendship," and all of us here look forward to continuing the dialogue.

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David Roberts and Thomas Friedman talk green.Wednesday night, Grist hosted a party -- nay, a soirée -- at The Warehouse in Washington, D.C. Among those in attendance were EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley, Green Jobs Czar (don't call him that to his face!) Van Jones, and a number of other fabulous folk from the green world.

For the night's entertainment -- or "nerdtainment," as my brother said when I told him about it -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and I chatted on stage about climate, energy, and efforts to build a greener world, then took questions from the audience. Friedman discussed the updates and rethinking he's done for the paperback edition of his bestseller Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, which comes out in September. As he says, "there's a reason the ice banks of Antarctica and the banks of Iceland melted at the same time." In our financial system and in our environmental policy, we use the same kind of fraudulent accounting -- socializing risk, privatizing profit, and delaying responsibility. This generation, he says, will have to be the "regeneration," which changes both systems with an "earth race" like the space race of the 1960s.

He also made a note of his disappointment at being left off our list of badass greens. I told him we'd do a list of green mustaches to make up for it. (Think about it: Friedman, Amory Lovins, Joel Makower, our own BioD ... coincidence?)

Anyway, huge thanks to Friedman for being the star of our event, thanks to all who attended, and, what the hell, thanks to all the readers who have stuck with us for 10 long years. Here's to another 10!

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There's an old saying my granddad was fond of. "Dave," he'd say, rocking his chair, puffing his pipe, squinting into the distance, "don't be such an a**hole."

Wise words. On reflection, my post about Tom Friedman's column ended up unnecessarily heated and confrontational, even insulting. I stand by my take on the column, but Friedman is a sharp guy who's done yeoman's work legitimizing green issues (his book was great). He's pursuing goals we share. If he's doing so in a way that I find politically counterproductive in this case, he deserves to be addressed in a spirit of fraternity, not ... blogginess. (Not for the first time I rue the fact that 95 percent of my published work consists of hastily written first drafts.)

It's worth the time to explain, to Friedman and the wider world, why I and many others are so frustrated right now. Interestingly, reaction to my post was sharply split. From insiders -- Congressional aides, legislative liaisons, folks inside the process -- the reaction was "right on!" From readers and semi-engaged outside observers, the reaction was a bemused, "why so angry? He seems sensible to me." (One exception: Kevin Drum, who gets it.)

What explains this dissonance? Why are people immersed in this stuff so frustrated, to the point that a simple op-ed column makes them want to chew their own faces off? Why so angry?

The moment

To understand the anger it helps to imagine, for a moment, that you are Rep. Ed Markey.

During the Clinton administration your green ambitions were thwarted by a Republican Congress. Then came six long years of ignorance and inaction under unified Republican rule, even as the science of climate change grew ever more dire and urgent. Finally, in 2006, your party regained Congress. Energy and climate were top priorities of your new Speaker, and she put you in charge of a special committee designed to publicize expert testimony, shift public opinion, shift business and elite opinion, and educate other members. All the learning, research, and planning greens had done underground for over a decade surfaced, and an honest-to-god process of moving toward legislation began. At last!

Then in 2008, history happened. A transformational candidate was elected president. Your majority increased in Congress. After a bruising battle, fellow green and top-notch legislator Henry Waxman was put in charge of the Energy & Commerce Committee, and you were placed atop the subcommittee on energy. Together, the two of you felt out the new landscape, talked with various lawmakers and members of the business community about what they'd need in exchange for their support, talked with minority groups and social justice groups and green groups and talked and talked and talked. A delicate dance, on a complex problem, with multiple competing interest groups, inched slowly forward.

Finally, after years of stifling inaction, you construct what you think is the strongest possible bill that can garner enough support to pass. Along with your Congressional leadership, you realize that this is the moment: a popular president in his first year, weakened opposition, and unprecedented public awareness.

It could all go away. If the economy worsens, Dems could get booted out in the mid-terms. Obama could lose in 2012. Energy and climate could fade from public consciousness as short-term suffering increases. Climate science makes clear that the time for efficacious action is growing perilously short. A looming international meeting in Copenhagen represents what may be the last real chance to shift the global trajectory.

This is the moment. You may not have a moment like it again any time soon. So you go big, piling all your energy/climate ambitions in to One Big Bill. It's got historic changes in energy, energy efficiency, and the grid, not to mention the carbon cap and trade system that greens have been discussing for decades. You realize the cap-and-trade stuff is wonky and nobody outside DC understands or much cares about it, so you lead with the energy/jobs/economy stuff, which polls through the roof.

Finally. It's here. The real fight begins! Time for everyone to call their armies and start marching! This is what everyone's been waiting for! Right?

The Republicans

Nobody told Republicans that history happened. Despite all the talk about bipartisanship and cooperation from Obama, Congressional Republicans quickly made it clear that there would be no cooperation. No Republican votes for the White House agenda. Not even from Republicans in districts and states that Obama won by a hefty margin. It was going to be pure, uncut, implacable opposition. Even the hesitant steps some Republicans had taken toward sanity on climate (including John McCain) were erased, and House Republicans got back in the game of disputing the very existence of climate change. Republicans in both houses immediately attacked any effort to address climate as an economy-destroying tax.

The Democrats

Nobody told "moderate" Senate Democrats that history had happened. They immediately set themselves up as gatekeepers of Obama's agenda, trimming billions (and millions of jobs) out of the stimulus bill. They voted to foreclose the option of passing the energy/climate bill as part of budget reconciliation (which requires only a 51-vote majority, not the 60 required to overcome a Republican filibuster). They criticized the decision to package energy and climate together, jealous of their jurisdictional prerogatives. They talked incessantly about the dangers of reducing carbon emissions to taxpayers in their states, and said nothing about tax rebates, energy efficiency, or the danger of climate change.

Obama's team

Obama's great messaging on green stuff during the campaign went out the window as his administration turned its focus to the banking crisis. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was out telling reporters that fundamental technological breakthroughs would be required before climate could be solved, and that the administration was leery to push a carbon cap during a recession (which implicitly concedes that it's a blow to the economy, not the economic renewal Obama discussed on the trail). At the first hint of pushback from big business, Obama and science adviser John Holdren backed off on the administration's pledge to auction 100 percent of the pollution permits under a cap, a clear social and economic justice concession. Holdren talked about how the administration was taking the hail-mary pass of geoengineering seriously. Obama and his team tripped over themselves to talk about how hard climate policy is and how willing to compromise they are.

The public

Obama and the Dems ran on a crystal clear platform of three priorities: energy, health care, and Iraq. Energy was, as Obama repeated several times, the first priority. Green is all the hype everywhere. So you might think that the public would be engaged in this push.

But polls find public interest as low as ever, and opinion about climate and energy policy as inchoate and incoherent as ever. There are no rallies. There are no emails and letters and phone calls streaming into Congressional offices. There is no real social movement behind energy/climate action. There's nothing to push a recalcitrant member of Congress in the right direction.

The media and opinion leaders

This brings us, finally, to the group of people that has some ability to rally public action, to pressure Congress, to reinforce positive messages, and to educate a body politic that remains abysmally ignorant about both the problem and the range of possible solutions.

But even here, there's no support. Congressional Dems put forward a bill that is fronted by historic, job-creating, national security-enhancing action on energy, efficiency, and the national grid. What does the media do? Even the progressive media? Cover it as a "cap-and-trade bill." If you hadn't read the bill itself, you'd have trouble telling from the media coverage that there were other provisions in it.

Do green journalists and bloggers and activists focus on the economy-reviving aspects of the bill? No. Almost more than the mainstream media, they obsess over the wonkiest, least popular aspect: carbon pricing. Even there, it is to bash cap-and-trade -- a consensus policy position a decade in the making -- in favor of a carbon tax. A huge new tax! This new progressive love of the tax code is bolstered by a bizarre mythology wherein a tax is simpler, and more popular, and more authentic, and downright heroic. Progressives bash Congressional Dems as greedy sell-outs and cap-and-trade as some kind of Wall Street-driven monstrosity. They focus attention on other bills that have zero chance of passing. They advocate scrapping a carefully wrought compromise built over four years by some of Congress's savviest operators and replacing it with high taxes, on the premise that such a radical, disruptive strategy is better politics. Because everyone in America thinks like affluent, white, hyper-educated internet wonks, right?

In other words, when a serious climate bill is finally in play, its worst enemy turns out to be the left.

After decades of inaction, something is finally underway and nobody is fighting for it. Republicans are undermining it. Democrats are undermining it. Greens are undermining it. The public doesn't give a damn. Imagine you are Markey. Imagine how you're feeling.

Friedman

This, then, is the backdrop from which Friedman's column emerged. The only sensibly green opinion leader with the reach and influence to clear up some of these confusions, focus some of this diffuse energy, pull the message back to stronger ground ... does the exact, diametrical opposite: reinforces the worst messages, ignores the non-carbon parts of the bill, disses the people pushing the bill, and advocates for some other bill that has no chance of passing. It's all the worst tendencies and messages, distilled to their essence, at the worst possible moment.

I wish Friedman had reached out to me, or Joe Romm, or someone on Markey's staff. Any of us would be willing, nay, desperate to help.

Regardless, my tone was unnecessarily pissy. When the battle to pass energy/climate is joined in earnest, later this year, Friedman will fight on the side of the angels. And it's a good thing. They'll need all the help they can get.

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Editor's note: See David's follow-up post to this piece.

...

Tom Friedman has done stellar work on green issues lately. He's certainly given them a higher profile than any dirty blogger could. So I guess he's owed some latitude. But his recent column is a disaster: wrong on the merits, politically tone deaf, and timed so poorly as to be malicious.

Timing

Next week, the House begins an intense round of hearings on a comprehensive Democratic energy/climate bill. This is not a pundit's daydream or backbencher making a point. It's a serious piece of legislation: the bill Democrats on the relevant committees will sign off on; the bill Obama will support; the bill that will go to the Senate; the bill that could, if everything goes well and progressives rally behind it, become law.

On the cusp of an enormous fight against well-funded proponents of doing nothing at all, Friedman has decided it's time for "an alternative strategy, message and messenger"? Seriously?

There will be no grand retooling in the next week. If it has any real effect, Friedman's endorsement of an alternative bill will simply divide supporters of the best chance for a serious energy/climate bill in 30 years. His timing could not possibly be worse.

Of course, Friedman is not a Democratic operative. He's under no obligation to stump for a bill that doesn't make his mustache tingle. When it comes to climate legislation, though, everybody has their own pony plan, their own messaging, their own strategy -- the one those silly legislators should be using. The opposition is united, and keeps winning, but hey, at least those on the side of action are clever.

Message

The bill that's heading into hearings next week is a comprehensive effort to address energy/climate issues. It's got provisions boosting clean energy, accelerating energy efficiency, and upgrading the national electricity grid. It sets standards for fuels, for electrical generators, for appliances. It's 600 pages long, and about a fifth is devoted to the carbon cap-and-trade program. That's deliberate. Dems are well aware that clean energy, energy security, green jobs, and economic renewal are their strongest messages. They know the carbon stuff is wonky and unpopular. They put everything together into One Big Plan so that the stronger parts could be foregrounded and the carbon cap recede.

Yet Friedman says the Dems' message is all wrong because ... they're too focused on the carbon cap. "[O]ur energy policy should be focused around 'American renewal,' not mitigating climate change," he says.

Who's focusing on the carbon cap here? Who's calling it the "center" of the Democrats' plan? Why, Friedman! Did he read the bill?

Politics

I have read the following sentence 50 times and I cannot make a lick of sense out of it:

Opponents of the carbon cap think they can kill the bill by calling it a tax. So the obvious political move is to... make it a tax. Because why again?

Maybe it's because of the new requirement that seems to have sprung up recently for federal legislation that tackles the most complicated set of interlocking problems in the nation's history: it has to be easy to explain to your grandmother. The tax code? Military budgeting? Medicaid? That stuff can be complicated. Dealing with energy and climate apparently has to be done via legislation that can be summarized in a Tweet. Because "people won't support what they can't explain," says Friedman.

Friedman supports a bill with a "simple" tax that would rise automatically unless an independent board determined that emissions were no longer on track for the target, in which case the tax would be adjusted; also there would be a border tax assessed on imports based on their carbon content. According to Friedman, "people get that."

It's Friedman who doesn't seem to "get" cap-and-trade, which he characterizes as "a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing." Indeed, he says, that's what cap-and-trade is "all about." Except it's nonsense.

Best of all: "Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened." This is asserted with no supporting evidence, indeed in the face of virtually all available polling and the experience of the last three decades of American politics. Perhaps Friedman heard it in a taxi?

Manly man

Of course, no Friedman column is complete without the claim that people will fall in line if they are told what to think by a manly man. That's what people understand: "Suck. On. This." Friedman wants Gen. James Jones to ride to the rescue on his heaving steed, saving poor environmentalist damsels in distress. Jones, a Marine general in charge of coordinating defense policy, could sell a historic piece of domestic policy because, well, he's military. And "imposing," which makes some columnists tumescent.

The ball

Friedman says the Dem bill "hides the ball" because it's not explicit about the price put on carbon. But this obsession with price misses the point. The price is not the ball. The cap is the ball. And that ball is right up front.

The price is unknowable in advance, since no one knows what it will end up costing to achieve the cap targets. So there is by definition no way to be transparent about the price before the fact. That's why all "simple, transparent" carbon tax plans sneak in a provision whereby tax rates are continually adjusted based on progress toward ... a cap. Except the price is adjusted by Smart Bureaucrats instead of markets. This is preferable, because a marine can explain it to your grandmother.

Somebody needs to hide Tom Friedman's ball. When he plays with it in public like this, he does real damage to the most important legislative effort of this generation at exactly the time it most needs support.

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Tom Friedman says cap-and-trade is in truth a form of taxation. But taxes don't suck. Why don't Dems and the adminstration just tell it like it is and push for something more straightforward: a carbon tax. Such a tax, he goes on to say, should be pitched as a way of renewing the American economy -- seeding an industry of clean energy -- and as a necessary means of protecting America's place as a top dog in the world.

Will this piece make Dave puke?

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The NYT columnist Tom Friedman has another terrific global warming piece this past weekend, "Mother Nature's Dow." He is the only major national columnist or reporter consistently warning the public of what science now tells us is likely result of continuing on our current greenhouse gas emissions path -- unmitigated unconscionable catastrophe. And he is the only one laying out the solution in detail. In this post I will endeavor to annotate his column for new and old readers who want more.

Friedman begins by noting, "I'm convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once." This piece is in some sense a sequel to his one from three weeks ago, see "Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?" He then lays out the climate realist position, noting:

He cites two scientific sources:

Then he lays out the five key policies needed to avert this catastrophe, the "climate bailout." He cites Hal Harvey, CEO of "a new $1 billion foundation, ClimateWorks, set up to accelerate the policy changes that can avoid climate catastrophe by taking climate policies from where they are working the best to the places where they are needed the most":

Obama is already taking action here (see "Obama to push for California waiver that mandates cut in auto CO2 emissions"). Ultimately we need to set fuel efficiency standards so high that they drive the transition to Plug-in hybrids -- a core climate solution.

Third, we need a national renewable portfolio standard, mandating that power utilities produce 15 or 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Right now, only about half our states have these. "Whenever utilities are required to purchase electricity from renewable sources," said Harvey, "clean energy booms."

Duh!

What I especially like about Friedman's and Harvey's policy strategies is that they don't talk about a Manhattan project or Apollo program for technology breakthroughs. Yes, we need much more R&D -- and thankfully both Obama and the venture capital community are delivering that, and a carbon price will drive even more R&D.

But if we don't embrace the strategies above quickly to drive existing clean energy into the marketplace, then all the R&D in the world won't save us, a point I will blog on (again) shortly.

I'll end with Friedman:

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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