Personal Response to Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded

I read Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded over this winter break. It was somewhat interesting, but I found myself quite bored when my brain was getting overloaded with more information, facts, and figures than any sane person could possibly want to know. The beginning went by slowly (taking econ would have been helpful in understanding the first chapter), but as I read more of the book, I understood Friedman’s ideas more and the book seemed more relevant to my life.

The title refers to three issues in our world today. The world is becoming hot due to global warming, flat due to equality of economic opportunities across the globe, and crowded due the increasing human population across the globe. Our world has become this way because of “overconsuming, overbuilding, overborrowing, and overlending.” The current recession and global warming are related because both are results of carelessness and greed for money. The hot, flat, and crowded state of our world has also caused five more problems: increasing demand for energy/ resources, petrodictatorship, climate change, energy poverty, and biodiversity loss.

America has slowly slipped away into laziness in the area of innovation after losing Russia as a competitor. We have lost our long term thinking and replaced it with short term thinking and unsustainable ways. In order for future generations to survive, we have to stop wasting energy and materials and cradle to cradle new products. I also think that America has to wake up in innovations and pave the way like a city on a hill in the area of green technology.

Although Friedman’s Plan A code green idea does not seem feasible yet, it does sound cool and I think that it is something to strive for. He says that because everything on Earth is connected somehow, we need a whole new green system to run the world. His plan involves using clean electrons, increasing energy efficiency, slowing population growth, conserving, and adapting to inevitable climate change. I agree with Friedman’s idea of having a million Noahs, not just one, because we can’t just wait for someone else to do something miraculous; everyone has to be a part of this green effort in order for it to work.

I’ve heard about global warming before, but I realized that I’ve had that IBG/ YBG mindset all this time. Since the world doesn’t look like one of those 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow apocalyptic movies yet, I thought that global warming would take place very far in the future. However, after reading this book I have realized that global warming is a huge problem. In fact, as I was watching some New Years fireworks, it made me shudder to think of all the tons of CO₂ being sent into the atmosphere around the globe. People talk about being green, but all those fireworks made me realize that like Friedman says we’re having a green party now, not a revolution, because people are not taking enough action. Also, I think the BANANA republic idea is very true because people don’t mind the idea of a green party, but no one wants to seriously make the effort to do something to solve the problem or even be inconvenienced by a green project. We really do need to be the “re-generation” to build a new, greener planet.