Thomas Friedman’s pregnant moment
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In Sunday’s paper, Susan Salter-Reynolds profiled Thomas Friedman and his new book, ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America.’ She sets up the issue:
What we need is a Green Revolution. This is our chance to show the rest of the world how to create a sustainable future. And we are blowing it. We have the knowledge, Friedman believes, but we lack the political will.
Friedman said that several threads of understanding -- about the economics of oil, the challenges of global warming and the effects of increased consumption -- came together for him in 2007. ‘I had this pregnant moment a year ago in May at a conference in Aspen,’ Friedman recalls. ‘I realized that the IT revolution would inevitably be replaced by the ET [energy technology] revolution.’
Salter-Reynolds writes, ‘Friedman works by his own idiosyncratic process: speeches, followed by columns and articles, usually written on airplanes, followed by books. ‘I am a verbal person,’ he admits. ‘I talk my ideas out.’ ‘
Which is why it’s particularly neat that the Aspen Institute has put this video speech online. It’s five minutes of him talking out the ideas that would become his book -- his ‘pregnant moment.’
--Carolyn Kellogg
