Over the long holiday I finally finished Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. The book is a mixed blessing. Friedman has written one of the best books to understand the emergency need for a global environmental revolution.
Friedman provides detailed examples of how the world has been wasting energy resources since the industrial revolution. Sadly I am convinced we are (environmentally speaking) screwed.
Friedman provides well written pages that will awaken those still asleep on the environment’s impact on the human race. If you think “green” is a movement to replace your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs your WAY off base. Its about re-educating how we waste energy and in today’s global economy risk losing more industries to countries around the globe.
The major challenge? This issue is no long America’s alone to fix. Thanks to globalization its now a problem for the entire world. Mother Earth needs assistance from China and India. Both must engage in green technologies to ensure planet earth’s health for the long term.
For China and India that includes all 3.5 Billion of their citizens who are just coming out of poverty. Their governments cannot permit new coal plants to dominate their air pollution. China alone brings coal-fired (dirty) power plants online every two weeks and will continue to do so for the short term future.
The Beijing Olympics was a perfect example of population and industrial pollution impacting the Chinese environment … and their economy.
Why China and India are causing the price of gasoline to rise.
When I was born in 1966 the earth’s population stood at 3.4 billion. When my son was born in 2007 the population doubled to 6.7 billion. What does our future hold when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion in 2050? Forget fuel costs for a moment. How much will it cost to feed your family?
This week my colleague ijohnpederson blogged about YouTube‘s January analytical results. For the first time over 100 million internet users in the U.S. watched 6.3 Billion videos. In the globalized world today that number is not very big. Consider how the world is connecting to the internet in larger and larger numbers: