“Hot, flat and crowded”: the messenger even more important than the message?
November 16, 2008
What I like a lot about this book is that he structures his messages in a way that most readers will embrace the need for greening. What for many (especially Americans?) is likely to be inconceivable becomes inevitable. And since people don’t change when you tell them that they have to, but only when they tell themselves that they must, this book is of great value to the cause of green innovation.
Friedman underlines that so far we have only seen a “green hallucination”. A green revolution is what we need. No revolution without pain. And the change we have to make is going to be painful on the one hand, but a huge opportunity on the other. Friedman makes a strong case on how markets can help make this change, how companies have to outperform their competitors on greening and how governments have to set a legal framework with challenging targets. As being green defines (future) success Friedman even wishes that America could be “China for a day”. Because although China’s system of government is inferior to America’s, Chinese leaders have the ability to cut through all pleading special interests, all the bureaucratic obstacles, all the worries of a voter backlash and simply order top-down the sweeping changes that reflect the country’s long-term strategic interests that would normally take the Western democracies years or decades to debate and implement.
Friedman quotes Michael Dell by saying that we need to be the “Re-generation”. This refers to people of all ages who share a common interest in renewable resources, recycling and others ways of sustaining the earth’s natural environment. I recommend you to read this book. If only to understand something that some MIT students claim in their tagline: ”We are the people we have been waiting for.” Are you among those people?
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