Green Is the New Red, White and Blue

by Wendy Werris -- Publishers Weekly, 5/30/2008 2:43:00 PM

In a passionate speech to an overflow crowd of convention attendees, keynote speaker Thomas Friedman (Hot, Flat and Crowded; FSG) exhorted the group to participate in reviving America by redefining their environmental lifestyles.

“Green is the new red, white and blue,” Friedman said. “Tackling the issues of our environment should be considered an act of patriotism rather than counter-American behavior.” The premise of Hot, Flat and Crowded is that the country has lost its way in the global arena largely because of bad environmental habits. “Our challenge is to be innovative in the way we take up the environmental cause. This is the only way we can make America stronger.”

Friedman proposed that the U.S. implement a “Code Green” policy as a means of beginning the process of overhauling its energy policies. Noting that after 9/11, President Bush implemented a “Code Red” philosophy that ushered in the war in Iraq instead of supporting environmental policies, the Pulitzer-winning author told the audience, “To make things stay the same, things will have to change.”

Friedman identified the mega-trends facing the world today as energy poverty, climate change, “petro-dictatorship” and biodiversity loss. “This the early days of what I refer to as EC—the energy climate era,” he suggested. “Too many of us are carbon-dependent. We have to start thinking like Noah; today we’re both the flood and the ark.”

Hot, Flat and Crowded makes the case for redefining the environmental movement. “The media labels this a ‘Green Revolution,’ but I beg to differ,” Friedman said. “Have you ever heard about a revolution where no one got hurt? I’d rather refer to what’s going on as a ‘Green Party’—a celebration of our accomplishments thus far.”

Quoting from a poem by Charles Bukowski, Friedman closed his speech by saying, “All that matters now is how we walk through the fire."