NYT's Tom Friedman is Wrong on Global 'Weirding'

In general, I am a big fan of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, one of the few national columnists who writes regularly & intelligently on energy and climate matters. But his recent column, "The People We Have Been Waiting For," goes off track -- twice. First, he writes:

... sweet-sounding "global warming" doesn't really capture what's likely to happen. I prefer the term "global weirding," coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, because the rise in average global temperature is going to lead to all sorts of crazy things -- from hotter heat spells and droughts in some places, to colder cold spells and more violent storms, more intense flooding, forest fires and species loss in other places.

Well, half credit. Yes, "global warming" is inadequate to describe the coming nightmare -- but "global weirding" simply isn't a serious enough term -- it could just as easily be used to describe the world's growing fascination with reality TV (or videos of piano-playing cats and skateboarding dogs).

Also, the word "weird" strongly implies something either supernatural or bizarrely unexpected. What's happening to the planet is pure science and has been predicted for decades -- nothing weird about that except maybe it's happening faster than most scientists projected. Climate Progress readers know I prefer the term "Hell and High Water" -- since at least it does accurately describe what is coming. [Note to self: It didn't catch on. Let it go.] My guess is we're stuck with "global warming."

[As an aside, Hunter probably didn't coin the term "global weirding" (see here), and, of course, she's not at RMI any more. I am a big fan of hers since we worked together at RMI, but those seeking her wise counsel on sustainability should go to Natural Capitalism, Inc (for profit) or Natural Capitalism Solutions (non-profit).]

Second, the entire point of the piece is that what gives Friedman hope is a bunch of smart people working on clean energy technology, who he claims are the "people we have been waiting for." I hate to break the news to Tom, but

• We've had a bunch of smart people working on clean energy technology for about 30 years -- and, of course, we'd have a lot more if Reagan and Gingrich hadn't gutted key applied energy technology programs or if conservatives didn't block efforts to create a carbon dioxide market.


• People working on technology are the people global warming Delayers like Luntz, Bush, Lomborg, and Gingrich have been waiting for. The people the rest of us are -- or should be -- waiting for are political leaders with the wisdom and guts needed to pass laws limiting carbon emissions and accelerating into the marketplace the technologies we developed in the last 30 years.


• It is way, way premature to say "we" or any group are the people we have been waiting for. Only future generations can say that. If we buck up and start now with the large-scale multi-decade actions needed to avoid catastrophic global warming, we might, come 2050, be viewed as the Greatest Generation of the 21st century. If not, we will surely be viewed as the Greediest Generation of all time, stealing the future well-being of the next 50 or more generations.

That said, I am a very big fan of all the clean energy folks Friedman names:



Google's new program, "RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal)" is a great idea, though I am a tad unhappy with their website, which touts "Supporting Breakthrough Technologies" -- breakthroughs in energy technology that are fundamentally game changing are a very, very overrated pursuit, as I have previously noted. Also, Google is just a drop in the bucket of the huge surge in corporate, venture capital, and even state government money going into clean energy.

What gives me hope about Google's effort is that it is being run by Dan Reicher, my savvy old boss at the Energy Department, who, as Friedman noted, is focused on bringing clean energy technologies "across the valley of death" (otherwise known as commericialization) -- a very important task that the Gingrich Congress explicitly tried to stop the Clinton Energy Department from pursuing and that the Bush Energy Department squashed entirely.

[Note to Dan: As you know, commercialization is not the same thing as "Supporting Breakthrough Technologies" -- not that the two are mutually exclusive, but the website should talk about both, especially since breakthroughs, while sexier, are just not likely and may not even be needed.]

Friedman is right to be impressed by the students of M.I.T., my old alma mater. The Energy Club does great work promoting entrepreneurship (see a keynote talk I gave at their 2006 energy conference here). And the multi-disciplinary, multi-country Vehicle Design Summit is working on the right car of the future, which is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, but Friedman's line -- "They're not waiting for G.M." -- misses three points:

First, GM is in fact working on a plug in, the Volt, which they are promising to debut quite soon.

Second, if MIT developed a prototype plug in and GM doesn't -- really what good does that do? We need mass production to make these cars affordable, and only big auto companies do that. I would ask, in passing, for the name of the last successful new American mass-market car company launched by anybody (and Toyota doesn't count). Hint -- it has been many, many decades. You can start a major PC businesses in a garage in this country, but apparently not a major car company.

Third, no country in the world has ever successfully launched a mass-market alternative fuel vehicle without government mandates. Apologies to all my anti-government readers out there -- but you can't solve either the oil problem or the global warming problem in transportation without mandates like CAFE, renewable or low-carbon fuel standards, and the like.

The people we are waiting for are the politican leaders. Everyone else needed to solve the global warming problem has been around for a while.

Comments

[kassandranobody]

I am so sick of all the con artists, i mean neo-cons saying that we are not causing global warming. I keep thinking, who cares what is causing it, we have to start working on the problem. And then i realized, wait if we are not causing it then i guess we can't stop it. Thats what it is. They have given up- What a bunch of losers. We can do something about it and we will when these greedy politicians and corporations get out of our way, because we are Americans and we are not afraid. This administration may be afraid, but Americans are not afraid.
Everyone for the holidays should buy stock in corporations and start going to stockholders meetings. If corporations have taken over this country- lets take over the corporations.

[UltraClassic]

The fact is, liberals and leftist democrats screwed the environment hard when they destroyed the developement and deployment of nuke power in the seventies.

Why is it that the liberal's beloved France can generate 90% of their power via nuke while we are stuck with coal fired plants? Can you say, "no nukes?" Did you ever put one of those bumper stickers on your VW?

[marko77]

I'd love it if Tom Friedman would get off this "Flat-Earth" kick and start to write about child workers and poor adults being used to pump out "product" for the "Global Economy" in Third World countries.

The Global Economy is making the few filthy rich and bringing down the standard of living for the vast majority.

I'm sure many more people are starving today as a result of this cursed "Flat Earth" con-man's shell game.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think they should call it Global Sunshine Story. Remember AlBore? He didn't really
'go green' in personal practice until somebody
called him out on his 2k/mo electric bill.
Hypocrisy and scientific ignorance figure largely in this issue, if more people understood
the word 'joule', 'coulomb', or 'kilowatt',
or, for that matter, measures of temperature,
R-values and so on, we could probably damn
near cancel the next supertanker of debt-increasing crude oil from the middle east,
Venezuela, or the long and storied list of
other countries whose only claim to fame
and fortune is that they have a large
subterranean oil leak. Ecopoltix vs. petropoltix, politics is generally defined
as the art of government, and if it's
'government by bullsh.. story', well,
that's not exactly democracyererer, now,
is it? Hmm...well...no. But, screwing around
with people's lives by controlling their
energy supply and what they can and cannot
then do with those materials is, well, some
shitty business, and that's what the concept
of energy independencerererer is all about,
breaking loose of that whole sunshine story,
by putting renewables on that merchant shelf
that have less varmital impak, things that,
no matter how they're used, aren't going to
wipe out the groundwater etc., and don't
leave us basically paying taxes to people
in foreign countries that passed math class.
When you can 'make your own', and you don't
have to participate in the globalizationerer
jawbs pogammer just to heat your home, well,
that's Good Medicine, there, any way you
look at it. Sure beats trying to import
your tomatoes from Moldavia when you can
dig a damn garden right outside your house...
that is, until THAT shit becomes illegal...
yes, the legal system has been manipulated,
too, to hopefully render Murkins irretrievably
dependent on this entire sunshine story.
Remember, kids, it's all about the growthieser...

[Economike]

I prefer the term "Hellz a poppin"

[mcthfg]

You worry too much. Just a short while ago, Thomas Freidman said global warming was a myth. Wait a few columns, and I'm sure he'll switch back.

You seem like a smart individual - why do you read the work of known idiots?

[leftLibertarian]

Friedman will never admit that he fell hook, line and sinker for Bush's lies about WMD and how the Iraqis would great us with sweets.

[joebaggadonuts]

It was a good point that the politicians are lacking, that Gingrich was the Grinch and all that. Thanks.

[Ais4Atheist]

i thought the term "climate change" replaced the term "global warming". Am i wrong?

[HeevenSteven]

I'd like to read your book; but I wish your publisher would release it in paper back already. Paperbacks are smaller and require less energy to ship ya know.

[CatfishJohn]

....Thomas Freidman-an affable yet serious intellectual foisted upon us by the corporate media who gave the Bush Iraq plan the benefit of worldwide extreme doubt. the substantive thinker who felt flourishing commerical/consumer economies would be sprouting up everywhere in Iraq and eventually the entire
region by now after we were triumphantly greeted with the flowers and sweets by the Iraqi poeple en masse yearning for Mcdonalds and wal Marts...this man's level of intellectual naivete about Bushco's transparent real agenda and his wide-eyed pollyannishness about the "healing" eventualities of benvolent corporate capitalism in the middle east should disqualify him from any further consideration as any form of serious thinker. period.

[FatJoe]

I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but if Tom Friedman really is "one of the few national columnists who writes regularly & intelligently on energy and climate matters," then I'm glad I don't waste my time with national columnists. I'll stick with Matt Taibbi: http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

[lamarguerite]

Maybe Tom used the wrong words, but the emotions behind his words are right on. Global weirding speaks to me, as a regular person, not a scientist. And like Tom, I have been carried a way more than once by my enthusiasm. And I could see how both the Google and MIT efforts could so excite someone like him.

http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
'It's All About Green Psychology'

[UtahLiberal435]

Even 'stopped clock' Thomas Friedman gets it right twice a day (or in Friedman's case, about once every five years).

But it's kinda dumb to bash this particular Friedman column, which shows how intelligent, innovative companies contrast so harshly with old-school, next-quarter, dinosaur industry, which always spends more on PR and lobbying than intelligent, forward-thinking R&D.

That said, yes, government regulation (mostly stick, and a lot less carrot) is definitely needed to force Amerikkan CEO (tm) culture past its current focus on compensation package greed, and back to actual innovation. The staffers and scientists are there; it's upper 'management' that's the problem in most auto and energy companies. The true purpose of government is to keep amoral Korporat warlords in check, and taser them into constructive effort.

[crabbie]

Let's call it The Big See You Later. I like that.