Hot Flat & Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution & How the U.S. Can Lead It -A Video

The best chapter in New York Times reporter Thomas L. Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, traces the correlation between the price of oil and the pace of freedom in petroleum- producing states between 1975 and 2005. When prices went up, freedom went down in places such as Iran, Russia and Nigeria.

"America's problem," Friedman writes, "is that it has lost its way in recent years,'' he says. Earth's problem is that it's getting ``hot, flat and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable.''

His solution: The U.S. should solve its own problem by fixing Earth's problem -- by helping the planet to grow ``in cleaner, more sustainable ways.''

Friedman provides some fascinating evidence. ``Green hawks'' in the U.S. military have pushed to get convoys off the roads (and save lives) by insulating tents and deploying wind turbines and sun-tracking solar panels.

Elsewhere, the blue-collar town of Erie, Pennsylvania, enjoys a trade surplus with China, Mexico and Brazil. Why? A General Electric Co. factory there produces train locomotives that use less fuel and spew less pollution, saving some 300,000 gallons of diesel (and related carbon emissions) over a 20-year lifetime.

Freidman is a hard-nosed believer in the power of the market to drive technology, making innovations like cell phones ever ``smaller, smarter, cheaper.'' Yet he also knows that regulators have tilted the U.S. energy market in favor of a wasteful, ``all-you-can-eat'' system for more than 100 years.

"The market will give us what we want," he writes, "but only if we give the market the signals its needs: a carbon tax, a gasoline tax increase, a renewable energy mandate, or a cap-and-trade system that indirectly taxes carbon emitters -- or some combination of all these.'

GE's Jeffrey Immelt tells Friedman that companies need price certainty to make multibillion-dollar bets on clean energy. He has no patience with pro-market diehards who say government shouldn't meddle.

"Don't worship false idols,'' Immelt says. "The government has its hand in every industry.''

Posted by Casey Kazan.