Friedman urges massive push for renewable energy

Friedman urges massive push for renewable energy

If Thomas Friedman were in charge of Michigan, "drill baby drill" and fighting for gas-guzzlers would go the way of the dinosaur.

The bestselling author of "The World Is Flat" and New York Times columnist spoke Wednesday in Ypsilanti to an enthusiastic crowd of well over 1,000 at a meeting of the Washtenaw Economic Club. The session was sponsored by the University Research Corridor, the consortium of Michigan's three major research universities, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University.

The event also featured a renewable energy business exhibition by several companies involved in the nascent industry.

Asked after his prepared remarks by UM president Mary Sue Coleman what he would do if he was in charge of Michigan, he first said: "My mantra sure as heck wouldn't be 'drill baby drill.' I'd put on the license plate of every Michigander, 'invent baby invent.' To say 'drill baby drill' on the eve of the energy technologies revolution is like demanding more IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution. Carbon paper baby, carbon paper."

He also said he'd do in Michigan what President George W. Bush did when he was governor of Texas -- insist on heavy development of wind power. "I'd have the highest renewable power standard in the country," he said. "I'd tell my utilities they had to be generating 30 percent of their power from renewable power by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050. They would all scream and moan, but all those innovators I've met here today would have a domestic market. Think it won't work? Go visit Denmark," where most power comes from wind, and where the unemployment rate is 1.6 percent because renewable energy is a major employer.

Finally, Friedman said, "I'd also tell my congressmen and senators to stop throwing their bodies in the path of those who would raise the fuel efficiency of the auto industry. All they have done is facilitate the falling behind of this industry."

Friedman spent his speech going through the arguments in his new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution -- And How It Can Renew America."

He broke his discussion into five themes:

* Energy and natural resources supply and demand: Friedman borrowed from a colleague the unit "Americums," a unit of measure of however many people there are in America, living like Americans do, in the world. Friedman said that when he was born in 1953, there were two and a half Americums in the world. Today there are nine -- two apiece in China and India. The Earth and its resources simply can't sustain that, so everyone has to get more efficient.

* Petrodictatorship: Friedman showed a homemade chart showing that the Freedom Index, a measure of how free countries are, moves in the exact opposite of oil prices. Making oil less expensive by using less of it simply boosts the cause of human freedom.

* Climate change: Rather than using the phrase global warming, which Friedman said "sounds kind of nice," he uses another borrowed phrase, "global weirding," which is the actual practical effect of global warming -- the weather gets weirder. "Hots get hotter, colds get colder, snows get deeper, rains get harder and the most violent hurricanes get stronger," Friedman said. And, he added, Al Gore owes us all an apology -- for underestimating the pace of climate change. All studies show it's accelerating. As for skeptics, Friedman said: "There are many good things about improved health care, but one of my favorites is that all the climate deniers are going to live long enough to see just how wrong they were."

* Energy poverty. Friedman said 1.6 billion people in the world have no electric service. Friedman said when he was a boy he rode a bike to a library full of books, which a kid in Africa with no power could also do. But today, he said, going to the library means having electricity and Internet access. Those who don't have power today, he said, "fall behind exponentially."

* Biodiversity loss. Friedman said we're in the middle of a mass extinction, losing a species every 20 minutes. He offered a quote from another observer: "We're burning down our library before we even catalog all the books." He said today's adults are "the first generation that's going to have to think like Noah -- saving the last pairs."

All of these problems, Friedman said, "are tremendous opportunities masquerading as unsolvable problems," because they "all have the same solution -- abundant, cheap, clean and reliable electrons."