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Pop!Tech Thomas Friedman
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18 minutes and 55 seconds
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Posted by:
peder on Jun 22, 2007
You may know Tom Friedman as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author, but a fashionista?! Well, sort of. Tom purports that green is the new red, white and blue, and that our current energy crisis is like no other.
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- POP!TECH
- BRINGS TOGETHER
- THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS
- TO SHARE INSPIRATION AND IDEAS
- IGNITING CHANGE
- AND UNLOCKING
- HUMAN POTENTIAL
- THIS IS PART
- OF THEIR ONGOING
- CONVERSATION
- POP! TECH
- POP! CAST
- Presented by Lexus Hybrid Drive
- GIVES MORE TO THE DRIVER. TAKES LESS FROM THE WORLD.
- THOMAS FRIEDMAN POP! TECH 2006
- I just got here and I'm really looking forward to this interaction.
- I'm going to talk just for 20 minutes, as we've all been allotted,
- in my columns which is very simple; Why this is not your parents' energy crisis.
- Why what is going on today is something fundamentally new and different
- and really requires us to think about and redefine
- And let me just quickly go through the 7 or 8 reasons I believe this
- is not your parents' energy crisis.
- The first has to do with the fact that we are in a war on terrorism today
- with people funded and fueled by our energy purchases.
- Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are funding both sides of the war on terrorism.
- How smart is that?
- We're funding the U.S Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, CIA, DIA, NSA,
- with our tax dollars and we fund Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al Qaeda,
- Saudi Arabia, Iran, and all the charities and institutions that
- support these groups directly or indirectly with our energy purchases.
- We are in a war and we are funding both sides of the war.
- And we often—or we rarely, I should say, connect the dots.
- But every once in a while you can see an event that goes by on the news screen
- that really shows you the degree to which we aren't connecting the events.
- And one of those was a couple years ago--when, in the same week, two things happened.
- The first was our Congress, in its infinite wisdom, rejected any attempt to impose higher CAFE--
- higher mileage standards on auto makers in Detroit.
- And in the same week, down in Cancun, Mexico,
- the World Trade Organization talks collapsed over the refusal
- of the United States, Japan and Europe to reduce their
- subsidies to their farmers so farmers in the developing world
- could grow more and sell their products.
- When I saw those two things happen,
- I said "let's think about what that actually means."
- What that meant was that the fact that we weren't improving
- our CAFE standards, we would make ever-increasing transfer payments--
- via Exxon, and Chevron, and Shell-to Saudi Arabia which would make
- ever-increasing transfer payments to various Saudi mosque charities and madrassahs.
- And one of those charities would build a madrassah somewhere
- in the Muslim world, somewhere like Pakistan in a village in Pakistan.
- Now the same week, by virtue of the fact that we refused to make any compromise
- on our vast subsidy to our cotton farmers--
- and other farmers, not to mention the Europeans and Japan,
- we ensured that somewhere out there in the developing world,
- a cotton farmer somewhere--say in Pakistan just went bankrupt.
- Now our cotton farmer has 2 sons.
- He sends them both to the local madrassah that was just built
- down the street because they serve a hot lunch every day
- and the public school's completely broken down.
- Madrasah curriculums are as simple as almost all religious study courses
- —no technology, no real science and 1 poli sci course—a very short course.
- And the poli sci course says that all your troubles
- are because of America, Israel, and Jews—a very short course.
- Now one day one of the sons of our Pakistani cotton farmer
- decides to join the jihad in Afghanistan against the United States.
- And one day one of your sons in US Special Forces, kills him.
- And we think we're winning the war on terrorism. Not a chance.
- So the first reason this is not your parents' energy crisis is because
- our consumption of energy, both the scale and the nature of it,
- is fundamentally related to the geopolitical predicament we're in.
- Second reason this is not your parents' energy crisis is that
- the world is flat.
- The world is flat and 3 billion new consumers called India, China
- and the former Soviet Empire--opened up and walked onto the playing field.
- And when did they arrive?
- Just when it has been flattened.
- Just when they could plug and play, compete, connect,
- and collaborate with your kids and mine, more efficiently, cheaply than ever before.
- And they all arrived with their own version of the American dream—
- a house, a car, a toaster, a microwave, a refrigerator, and a PC—with a printer.
- If we don't find an alternative to fossil fuels to power their future,
- we're going to burn up, choke up, heat up, and smoke up this planet
- when it's flat, so much faster than even Al Gore predicts.
- And that leads to the third reason this is not your parents' energy crisis
- and that is that clean power--green technology--
- is going to be THE growth industry of the 21st century.
- It is going to be THE growth industry.
- Mom and Dad tell your kids, if you want to be sure of a good upper middle class job,
- go in to green design, green manufacturing, green consulting, green services.
- This is going to be THE growth industry of the 21st century.
- It has to be—or there is going to be no planet.
- And what that means to me is that China is going to go green.
- But China is going to go green because China can't breathe.
- China's growing at 10% and is giving back at least 2% now every year--
- in the form of lost work days, gridlock traffic, air pollution, ill health of workers.
- So China is going to have to go green.
- And I think green China? Green China is going to be an even
- bigger challenge for us than red China.
- Because when China goes green, China's going to go green
- on the basis of low cost, scaleable, green technologies.
- If these technologies aren't low cost for the Chinese market, they won't scale.
- And if they don't scale, they will not have an impact.
- And so China, I believe, is poised to become, I think, a major green innovator.
- Maybe you caught the front page story in the Wall Street Journal last week about SunTech Power holdings.
- The richest man in China today is a solar power engineer.
- If you enjoyed importing all your hybrid engines from Japan,
- if you loved having to import all your wind turbines from Denmark--
- you're going to love what you have to import from China.
- There's only one way—only one way for us to confront that challenge.
- And that is with government regulation--that doesn't rig the market, doesn't fix the market--
- but sets broad, clear, and stringent guidelines on American mileage standards--
- China's mileage standards today are already more severe than our own.
- --mileage standards, appliance standards, and power generation standards—
- like California is doing today.
- Like a state--a state--like Texas did--
- --in 1999 with the Texas Renewable Energy Standard--told the local electric companies,
- "You guys are going to have to produce 2,000 megawatts a year of renewable energy by the year 2009.
- They all protested, "No way! No how!"
- But that visionary Texas Governor said, "You will do it and I'm signing this."
- Who was that man? [audience laugher]. Who was that man?
- That man's name was George W. Bush.
- If only—if only President Bush could meet Governor Bush [audience laughter].
- The reason--a year after the President told us that we are addicted to oil--
- and his government has done nothing of significance to address that deficit, that problem--
- is precisely because there's a huge fight in this administration
- between what I would call market fundamentalists who say, "Just let the market work"—
- --led by Dick Cheney. "See the market's working, the price of oil just went down."
- And those who understand—those who understand that the role of
- government is to set broad standards, tough guidelines,
- and then let the market achieve them.
- The fourth reason that this is not your parents' energy crisis
- has to do with the slide. Could you key the slide?
- Let's get out of the way here for a second. I'll explain this.
- I posited this in an article in "Foreign Policy Magazine" a couple months ago.
- I call it the first law of petropolitics.
- And the first law of petropolitics states that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation.
- As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down.
- And as the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up
- --in what I call petrolist or petroauthoritarian countries.
- Petrolist or petroauthoritarian countries are countries that are
- highly dependent on oil for their GDP and have very weak institutions.
- Norway is not such a country but, obviously, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Angola, Equatorial Guinea are.
- Now, basically--I illustrated this--what I did was I plotted the price of oil from 1979 to the present, on 1 graph
- and then I overlaid on it for--Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia--
- the Freedom House Freedom Index for these countries.
- And what you see is roughly this graph.
- 1979 price of oil skyrocketed—you know—with the Iranian revolution.
- And then it slowly started to decline, cratering in 1995--
- With all due respect to Ronald Reagan, who brought down the Soviet Union--
- the price of crude oil, the day the Soviet Union collapsed, hit $16 a barrel.
- That's not an accident.
- Now, basically, as the price of oil went down, the pace of freedom went up.
- So--The Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
- Back in the early 90's Iran was having a free and fair election
- where all kinds of reformers and reformers' parties got elected.
- Reformist journals and magazines were opening and Iran's reformist President was calling for a Dialogue of Civilizations.
- Yeah, $20, $30 a barrel—Iran was calling for a dialogue of civilization.
- At $70 a barrel, Iran is calling for the destruction of Israel and
- declaring that the Holocaust is a myth.
- I can guarantee you, at $20 a barrel, the Holocaust is not a myth. [audience laughter]
- At $30 a barrel George Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's soul--the President of Russia and saw a good man down there.
- At $70 a barrel you look into Putin's soul you'll see Gaspron, Lucos--
- every TV station and newspaper, not to mention government institution, that he's devoured.
- The price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation.
- This is critically important.
- Because basically what's happened, is that we thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall
- was going to unleash an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people.
- And for about 15 years that was the case.
- But that fall of the Wall coincided with oil at $30 to $40 a barrel.
- As we've moved from a world of $30 to $40 a barrel of oil,
- to a world of $60 to $80 a barrel of oil,
- what's happened is that the fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall-wave
- has suddenly encountered a counter-wave.
- A counter-tide of petroauthoritarian states called Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Angola,
- Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, and all of these states, basically,
- now have petroauthoritarian regimes ensconced in power.
- And this trend of petroauthoritarianism has the potential to completely
- poison geopolitics if we see another 10 years of this.
- Did you follow the debate at the UN a couple weeks ago?
- The UN Security Council wanted to send peacekeeping troops to
- Sudan to stop a massive genocide—a documented genocide.
- Open and shut case. The UN wants to send troops to stop a genocide.
- And guess who blocked it? China. Why?
- Because China owns 40% of the Sudan oil company.
- That's petropolitics poisoning geopolitics in action.
- I'll do a little quiz with you. Which was the first Arab Gulf state to run out of oil?
- Actually, excuse me. Which was the first Arab Gulf state to discover oil?
- The first Arab Gulf state to discover oil was Bahrain,
- a tiny state off the east coast of Saudi Arabia.
- The first Arab Gulf state to run out of oil was Bahrain.
- The first Arab Gulf state to hold a free and fair election,
- where women could run and vote, was Bahrain.
- The first Arab Gulf state to sign a free trade agreement with the United States was--Bahrain.
- And the first Arab Gulf state to completely reform its labor laws—because its people had to work--
- —say it with me now—was [audience laughter] Bahrain.
- This is not an accident, friends.
- The price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation.
- The last reason this is not your parents' energy crisis is very simple.
- And my host, Bruce Taylor, really helped me think this through.
- It's very simple.
- Google and Yahoo are the China and India of the world of bits and bytes.
- As these companies have to build more server farms--
- these and every other company, every bank, every brokerage firm, every university--
- every time you search on Google, you don't think about it,
- but at the other end of that search, is a little burst of power, a little fan cooling that power--
- Okay? And a little meter reading that power.
- Now I know you heard this morning about the scale of clicking that's going to happen in the world?
- The amount of energy that is going to start to consume as everything moves to the web,
- is going to mean that Google and Yahoo! become to this energy problem the parallel of what the rise in China and India are.
- And if we don't find a way to solve that, we are also not only going to run out of energy,
- but we're going to limit and start to constrict our ability to take avantage of these incredible networks and the power within them.
- To sum it all up, and for all these reasons, friend,
- if you want to know what I'm up to in my column
- I'm really up to trying to redefine green.
- I'm a big believer that in the columnist business
- to name something is to own it.
- If you really want to own an issue, you name that issue.
- The world is flat.
- And the problem with green—the problem with the word green?
- is it was subtly named and appropriated all these years
- by the people who hated it.
- And they named it liberal, girly man, unpatriotic, sissy—vaguely French--
- [audience laughter]
- That's what they did.
- And what I'm all about, in my little slice of this campaign,
- is to rename green, geopolitical, geostrategic, capitalistic, patriotic.
- Green, my friends, is the new red, white, and blue.
- Thank you very much.
- [audience clapping]


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