Keeping Cool in a World that’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has completed his transformation from Middle East specialist to green energy expert. He wants the United States to similarly switch focus.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman’s latest book, explains how and why we must stop relying on "fuels from hell" (coal, oil, and gas) as our primary source of energy, and instead switch to "fuels from heaven" (wind, water, and solar). Without this shift, he argues, not only will we cook the planet, but wreck the economy and destroy our way of life. It is tough to quibble with Friedman’s assessments.

Friedman weaves a multitude of fascinating stories and personal anecdotes from all over the world into one master narrative. The book is packed with apt and memorable analogies, similes, and metaphors. For example, he refers to population growth as "our carbon copies", loss of biodiversity as "the Age of Noah", and global warming as "global weirding".

I have long struggled with trying to explain the concept of "environmental externalities" in a way everyone can understand. Friedman explains these hidden costs by likening our energy use to a too-cheap-to-be-true, all-you-can-eat buffet:

A few people – like Al Gore – started to wander around out back into the kitchen, and what they saw there was not pretty. And then they came back to the front of the buffet line and told the rest of us: "Do you know what is going on out back? Do you know why this all-you-can-eat electron buffet costs only $5? It’s because there are all sorts of costs being incurred that are not being passed on to us customers. They are being paid by someone else."

These costs were being paid by society at large or charged to our children’s credit cards.

The storyline is clear: We’re using 19^th century fuels to power a 20^th century economy. To survive, we must transform into a 21^st century economy powered by 21^st century fuels. We need to undergo an ET (Energy Technology) revolution akin to the IT revolution of the 1990s, but there are important differences. We need a Green New Deal to push the ET revolution forward.

The ET (vs. IT) Revolution

Friedman is absolutely right that the ET revolution will not happen the same way the IT revolution did. The internet grew into a void. Consumers paid $1000 for the first mobile phones because they were new and filled a need not met by phones bolted to the wall.

That isn’t the case with new energy technologies. Americans – and the additional billion who live like Americans – already enjoy cheap power. Clean energy that costs more than energy from dirty coal cannot make a profit – thus Google.org’s goal of "RE < C" (electricity produced from Renewable Energy cheaper than that from Coal).

Actually, Friedman says that what we need is "REEFIGDCPEERPC < TTCOBCOG" (a renewable energy ecosystem for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation cheaper than the true cost of burning coal, oil and gas). I said Friedman was a great storyteller, not a great abbreviator. But the acronym soup makes an important point: the solution won’t be easy.

The ET revolution will require a regulatory framework that reflects the true cost of burning dirty fuels. It’s on this point that the book is weakest. Friedman says that "at a minimum … we need … a price signal – a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade regime, or a national renewable energy mandate." We do need a price signal, but there are profound differences between these three approaches. EDF backs a nationwide cap-and-trade bill for good reason.

Despite this small lapse, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is worth reading for anyone interested in why "Al Gore owes us an apology," how China is like the bus maneuvered by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed, what it will take for Iran’s president to call for a "dialogue of civilizations," or why the Pulitzer Prize committee should award Friedman his fourth award.

This post is by Gernot Wagner, an economist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.