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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says that Bush's plan to remake the Middle East will fail unless the U.S. starts guzzling less gas -- and that if asked, Americans will pay $4 a gallon.
Apr 7, 2005 | As the green movement fends off accusations of impotence, Thomas Friedman has hatched an idea that could make a man out of environmentalism.
In January, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times debuted his "geo-green" strategy, a powerful proposal for reframing America's quest for energy independence to appeal to hawkish neocons and lily-livered tree-huggers alike. By aggressively curbing America's energy consumption, Friedman argues, the Bush administration could reduce the global price of oil to the point where it would force regimes in the Middle East to diversify their economies, thereby priming them for democratic reform.
Added geo-green benefits would include jump-starting America's 21st century clean-energy economy, addressing the global-warming crisis, and allaying international umbrage over the Bush administration's royal diss on Kyoto.
"We are, quite simply, witnessing one of the greatest examples of misplaced priorities in the history of the U.S. presidency," Friedman proclaimed in a March 27 column. "Look at the opportunities our country is missing -- and the risks we are assuming -- by having a president and vice president who refuse to ... marry geopolitics, energy policy, and environmentalism."
Friedman has been writing on matters of energy and diplomacy for nearly three decades. He began working at the New York Times in 1981 as a business reporter specializing in OPEC and oil-related news. He took time out of his vacation in Aspen, Colo., last week to talk to Grist about why neocons are taking a shine to renewable energy, his new book "The World Is Flat," his geothermal home, and his brand-new Lexus hybrid.
If you were sitting down with President Bush to pitch your geo-green strategy in a few sentences, what would you say?
I would say that geo-green is the natural successor to neocon. The neocons basically believe in using American military power to drive the democracy agenda in the Middle East, and that, idealistically speaking, was the purpose of the invasion of Iraq. The reality is we do not have the resources to do that again -- not in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or anywhere. Yet we have a fundamental interest in promoting political and economic reform in that part of the world so people have better governance, more opportunities, and less frustration. Like the president, I want to see that political reform agenda go forward.
So how would substantial reductions in American oil demand achieve that?
It will help bring down the global price of oil, and when you do that you create a burning platform under these governments that forces change. As long as we have $60-a-barrel oil, Arab gulf countries won't diversify their economies and their regimes can buy off all the discontent. They will use huge oil windfalls to fund state-owned industries that soak up jobs, but don't create an educated or dynamic economy.
You could actually track on a graph the rise and fall of political reform in Iran that mirrors almost perfectly the rise and fall in oil price. And look at Bahrain, one of the first Arab gulf countries to discover oil, and the first to run out of it. It was also the first to hold a free and fair election where women could vote and run, and the first to totally revamp labor laws to wean itself off dependence on foreign labor. A similar trend happened in Jordan.
What if Bush said, "I'm all for energy independence, but I'm going to get there by opening up lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil extraction"?
That's stuff and nonsense. It's brain-dead. It's Karl Rove-ism at its absolute, undiluted essence: Politics and polls über alles -- over everything. The truth is, I'm not against drilling in ANWR. I mean, look, I don't want to be drilling in the wilderness, in the cathedrals of the environment. But if ANWR were part of a total strategy of geo-green, I can accept that, because it says we're not going to have to do the next ANWR, because we have a total strategy.
And of course, drilling in these regions is never going to have any significant impact on the price of energy globally.
Exactly. And realistically, ANWR would be better for China than the United States -- it's much easier to get Alaskan crude to China than America. You'd have to take that oil from Alaska down through Panama Canal up to Houston, where the majority of refineries are. This whole notion that it would be a boon to America is absurd.
Where did your geo-green concept originate? The first dispatch on this idea came from the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Yes, I was just sitting at the Davos conference and actually having a conversation with a friend of mine on the phone and I was ranting and raving -- this is where most of my ideas emerge -- and I said, "You know, what we really need is something that merges neocons and environmentalists because they both actually have the same interests right now." So I said we need a "neo-green" strategy, then I thought, no -- "geo-green." That's how columns get written.
Are you addressing this concept in your new book?
Yes, my book is called "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century." See, when the world goes flat it is a global leveled playing field. When 3 billion people who were out of the game called China, India and the former Soviet empire walk onto the field with the American dream -- of a car, a house, a refrigerator, a toaster, utilities -- we are going to smoke up, burn up, or heat up the planet at a rate unlike anything we've seen before. There are about 800 million cars in the world today, and given what's happening with China and India, by 2050 there will be around 3.25 billion. So if we don't do something about this, we're going to melt both polar caps and you can kiss Manhattan goodbye. Dick Cheney's ranch out there in Wyoming might even feel the burn.
That raises a question about the plausibility of your geo-green proposal: Even if America and other industrial countries were to take aggressive measures to reduce our oil demand, won't the ballooning demand in India, China, Russia and elsewhere keep oil prices high? Won't oil suppliers in the Middle East have plenty of takers even if our demand drops?
It would certainly have an effect, but as it is the U.S. has towering influence over the global oil economy. We consume 25 percent of the world's energy and we've got 5 percent of the global population, so what we do matters not only in terms of what we do, but because our strategy will drive innovation and global trends. If we converted our entire auto fleet to hybrid, that would have a huge impact first in the U.S. and then in the rest of the world. As efficient technologies penetrate markets here, they will become the technology of choice and penetrate the markets globally. If we set the example, pioneer alternatives, and improve the energy products we export, it will hugely influence the level of demand created by the countries coming online.
You really think you could get the American people onboard?
Absolutely. I have my own kind of Nielsen ratings for columns. I know what's getting reaction from people and what isn't, and every time I write about this the reaction is off the charts compared to anything else I write.
