Three Lessons from Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

In his latest book Hot Flat and Crowded, Tom Friedman has taken up the cause of renewable energy. Friedman’s stature as a journalist and intellectual add a great deal of weight to the controversial debate over energy policy.

The book has generated a storm of debate itself, but I think it met the author’s main goal: to provide an easy to understand path out of a tricky situation. Detractors will point to all the things he does not cover is their differences of opinion, which is perfect because that just means that Mr. Friedman got the issue on the table.

I was lucky enough to see him speak on his book tour and his presentation was a succinct summary of the arguments made in the book: a candid look at where the world is now and how we got there and a recipe for not only solving the problem of “global weirding” (he hates the term “global warming”, which he argues is too simplistic) but of putting America back on top with Energy Technology or ET.

Here are three things I’d like to share from the book:

Leadership should point the way and make the job easy, but it cannot do the job itself. Nor should it.

Friedman takes this viewpoint when addressing the government’s role in what he feels the energy policy of the future should be. What he would like to see are a minimal amount of laws and regulations that encourage development of sustainable products.

The broader implication here is more along the lines of the carrot and stick argument, that the “leaders” in whatever sense ought to use their power and influence where it can be most effective: by cutting away restrictions and allowing creativity and innovation to lead the way.

It’s okay to fail, as long as we keep trying.

Using the technology rise (and resulting bubble) as a precedent, Friedman suggests that the best way to fail is to not try. He encourages “throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google.”

Yes, there are plenty of great examples of failures from the dot com bubble, but look at how companies like Google and Amazon have changed the world. We know what the right direction is, so why not use the shotgun approach instead of becoming gun shy?

Our enemies can be defeated when we use our positive, creative energies to do the right thing.

Mr. Friedman devotes an entire section to “petrodictatorships”, citing the power of countries like Venezuela and Iran. He did some research and discovered that there is a direct relationship between the price of gas and the amount of power wielded by Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Higher gas prices mean more power for them.

By devoting our time and energy to creating solutions to the problem rather than trying to stop them, we end up with not only a stronger economy for us but a weaker power base for them.

Friedman’s The World is Flat is a favorite of mine, so I was very happy to have been able to see him speak. He closed his presentation in the same way he ends the book, with a motivational quote: “Do we have enough time? Yes, if we start right now.”

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