By Jennifer Price
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stressed the need for the U.S. to lead a global green revolution if it wants to continue to be a world superpower.
“Whichever country comes up with the most abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons is going to have the most national security, energy security, monetary security and ultimately global respect. And that country has to be the United States of America,” Mr. Friedman told about 1,500 GW students, faculty and staff Jan. 21 during a lecture at Lisner Auditorium. “If we are not one of the leaders, if not the leader, in energy technology, the chance of us passing on our standard of living to the next generation is zero.”
GW’s freshman class read Mr. Friedman’s latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, last summer as part of the Freshman Reading Program.
Mr. Friedman said the U.S. has been having a “green party” rather than a “green revolution.”
“You’ll know when we’ve had a green revolution when there’s no such thing as green anymore. There won’t be a green building. It’ll just be a building. There won’t be a green car. It’ll just be a car," he said. “We want to make the word green disappear because it becomes so common and so standard.”
Kathryn Kersavage, a GW senior majoring in international affairs, said while everyone talks about climate change and overpopulation, people don’t do much about it.
“I don’t think people realize the severe and irreversible consequences,” she said.
Ethan Elser, a GW senior majoring in marketing and hospitality, said Mr. Friedman made him think about green in a whole new way.
“I always thought of green as this new trend but he really put it into a perspective of how it’s going to be such an issue in our lifetime,” said Mr. Elser. “There really are simple solutions and the U.S. needs to be a leader on this.”
But without a price on carbon, there will be no green revolution, said Mr. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
“The problem with the [energy revolution] is that even when it succeeds, at the end of the day, all it will give us is the same light, the same heating and cooling and the same mobility,” he said. “Therefore to get people to switch from dirty fuels to cleaner ones requires a price.”
But that price is vital to the world’s future or “we are going to burn up, choke up and eat up this planet.”
In 1830, there were 1 billion humans on the planet. In 2008, there were 1 billion teenagers. And the United Nations predicts there will be 9.2 billion people on Earth by 2052, said Mr. Friedman.
Because population continues to grow at such a vast rate, Friedman said Americans must redefine in more sustainable terms what it means to live an American lifestyle or the world is “going to look like Target at Christmas.”
In addition to Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, Mr. Friedman’s bestsellers include The World is Flat, Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism, The Lexus and the Olive Tree and From Beirut to Jerusalem, which serves as a basic text on the Middle East in colleges and universities nationwide and won the National Book Award.
Mr. Friedman encouraged GW students to “get into the face of” what he called a “broken Congress” and push for cap-and-trade legislation instead of just blogging about environmental concerns.
“If we don’t get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face, the rules of the future are going to be written without us,” he said. “Be missionaries for this cause.”
Ms. Kersavage said she and her peers talk about making a difference but have yet to achieve real change.
“If we don’t get someone’s face about it, we won’t see change for a long time. We need to make small changes, little by little, and also organize on a much larger scale,” she said.
Mr. Elser said while some students are extremely passionate about the environment and will follow Mr. Friedman’s advice, others don’t believe they will make much of a difference.
“A lot of students think that writing a letter to a congressman will not actually do anything,” he said.
But the time for being complacent is over, Mr. Friedman said.
“We are at a critical juncture ... We have to get back to work on our country and our planet,” Mr. Friedman said. “The stakes couldn’t be higher. The project couldn’t be harder. The payoff couldn’t be greater. And we have exactly enough time starting now.”
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