This was the right week to pick up Thomas Friedman?s new book. There is too much of the enveloping global financial crisis all around us. In fact, my one regret coming from Hot, Flat and Crowded is if the author had timed the release of the book for end December 2008, we could have enjoyed this 360 degree vision of our overcrowded world even more.
As the title suggests, Friedman advocates a robust case to take up the green cause. But that is being facile. If this was another piece to add to the literature on environment, I would have had serious reservations. Code Green, as he terms his agenda, is far more than that. For any author to expand on a phenomenon like The World Is Flat is intimidating. It is too early to say if Friedman has been able to achieve that. One suspects that he has not. But leaving such comparisons aside, Friedman brings the debate on green a far more well-researched analytical thinking than a large percentage of the current literature on the subject.
It is this aspect which makes the book the sort of read most often necessary to make the subject clear, and cut down on the holy right or left humbug that goes under this garb. Just sample this: ?If you are in the technology business today and you have not been invited to a green-tech conference somewhere, you must not be breathing or everybody has lost your e-mail address. To say that green is the color de jour is an understatement. ?Green? was actually the single most trademarked term in 2007, according to the US patent and trademark office. Environmental reporters in newsrooms, who used to sit in the corner farthest from the editor?s desk, are suddenly cool.?
Friedman says the politics of the issue has shifted so much that even ?al-Qaeda supporters, who always have their fingers on the global pulse, are getting in on the green branding thing?!
This is the most remarkable aspect of the book ? the canvas that Friedman spreads to make his views persuasive. And persuade he does. He says the world that is flat (where globalisation is making the most of the middle class), overcrowded (population growth) and hot (impact of climate change), and that it needs to champion the green agenda as a hard nosed commercial venture. According to him, the US is best positioned to take the initiative in this venture. If the US does not, China and possibly India could take the initiative, but none of them have the network of high quality laboratories or financial wizardry to come up with the best possible answers. He says if the US does take the lead, which it is currently loath to do, it could make the world an easier place to live in.
Currently the world has too much of an issue with the US and its conception of the world order. Friedman says that this is partly shaped by realpolitik, but the weltanschaung that characterised the US a century ago as the land of innovation and enterprise can be recaptured if the green agenda is made more than a fad. Friedman?s perspective on the role of the US and China can be compared with the one articulated by Fareed Zakaria in The Post American World.
Zakaria argued that China, and by a long shot India, could take over global leadership in an array of sectors unless the US overcomes its siege mentality to develop a more inclusive world view. Friedman traverses this territory too, but he is more sanguine that the US can reverse and indeed travel better as green pioneer. The book has two sections ? a recounting of the present position, followed by Friedman?s take on how to move forward. But in this week, when the present world order is coming unstuck, one feels a sense of unease. The innovation order of the US had as one of its platforms, its massive financial engineering.
In what shape the US will come up again is something that needs to be seen. The green agenda could, one suspects, be somewhat of a casualty in that process. Probably Friedman himself will come up with an answer soon.