Breakthrough: Tom Friedman Cuts to the Chase on Global Warming

Tom Friedman has been writing a bristling column on energy issues and global warming for years. Lately he's been wrestling with the challenge of what to do about skyrocketing global energy demand. On the one hand, rising energy consumption is good, since it is strongly correlated with longer lives, a higher standard of living, and better health. On the other hand, increasing energy consumption is a prime cause of global warming

He arrives at conclusions very similar to ours:

In our Break Through excerpt for the New Republic, we wrote:

Environmentalists can rail against consumption and counsel sacrifice all they want, but neither poor countries like China nor rich countries like the United States are going to dramatically reduce their emissions if doing so slows economic growth. Given this, the challenge we face as a species is to roughly double global energy production by mid-century while simultaneously cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half worldwide (and about 80 percent in the United States), so that we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

In his column today on skyrocketing energy consumption in China, Friedman refers to as the hundreds of millions of people who are becoming "Americans" in terms of their energy consumption.

Our planet cannot tolerate so many "Americans," unless we take the lead and change what it means to be an American in energy terms. Attention Kmart shoppers: the world consumed about 66.6 million barrels a day of oil in 1990. We're now consuming 83 million barrels a day.
"Demand for oil has grown 22 percent in the U.S. since 1990. China's oil demand has grown nearly 200 percent in this same period," Margo Oge, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's office of transportation and air quality, told the Tianjin China Green Car conference that I attended. "By 2030, the global thirst for oil is forecast to increase by another 40 percent if we maintain business as usual." Such an appetite would devour every incremental green initiative we make.

Don't tell the NRDC. The head of NRDC's climate program, David Doniger, told the Times yesterday that the Montreal protocol to phase out the cheap and easy-to-replace chemicals that were destroying the ozone hole shows how simple global warming will be to deal with:

"The lesson from Montreal is that curbing global warming will not be as hard as it looks."

Friedman proceeds to splash some cold water upon the faces of those who think we'll be able to get where we need to go through conservation and efficiency alone:

Hey, I'm really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I'm glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch -- maybe just the first course. I'm glad that solar and wind power are "soaring" toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the "20 green things" suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.

The punchline?

There is no green revolution, or, if there is, the counter-revolution is trumping it at every turn. Without a transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space, all of the incremental gains we're making will be devoured by the exponential growth of all the new and old "Americans."

We agree -- and would add to Friedman's case that what's required is something qualitatively different from the environmentalist politics of limits:

How could such a massive undertaking be achieved? Not, as environmental leaders insist, by limiting human power but rather by unleashing it. In terms of birthing a new energy economy, regulation is important--it's just not the most important thing. The highest objective of anyone concerned about global warming must be to bring down the real price of clean energy below the price of dirty energy as quickly as possible--most importantly, in places like China. And, for that to happen, we'll need a new paradigm centered on technological innovation and economic opportunity, not on nature preservation and ecological limits.

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