What is the Color of Innovation? It's 'GREEN'
This landmark article by Thomas Friedman is on how the U.S. can retake its role as a global leader and address the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature, and terrorism. Think there may be a need for new forms of innovation here? : )
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The Power of Green
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (video: meet the man)
Published in New York Times: April 15, 2007
Excerpts from article ...
"... The good news is that after traveling around America this past year, looking at how we use energy and the emerging alternatives, I can report that green really has gone Main Street — thanks to the perfect storm created by 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Internet revolution. The first flattened the twin towers, the second flattened New Orleans and the third flattened the global economic playing field. The convergence of all three has turned many of our previous assumptions about “green” upside down in a very short period of time, making it much more compelling to many more Americans.
But here’s the bad news: While green has hit Main Street — more Americans than ever now identify themselves as greens, or what I call “Geo-Greens” to differentiate their more muscular and strategic green ideology — green has not gone very far down Main Street. It certainly has not gone anywhere near the distance required to preserve our lifestyle. The dirty little secret is that we’re fooling ourselves. We in America talk like we’re already “the greenest generation,” as the business writer Dan Pink once called it. But here’s the really inconvenient truth: We have not even begun to be serious about the costs, the effort and the scale of change that will be required to shift our country, and eventually the world, to a largely emissions-free energy infrastructure over the next 50 years. ...
Read more of this New York Times article "The Power of Green"
Comments
Many of you have received this instantly popular and thought provoking commentary of Tom Friedman's that appeared in the NYTimes ( Friedman Article ), was immediately forwarded everywhere and is quoted above. (I received 4 copies of it in one day from different sources). Since I have received a copy of a contrary view from James Howard Kunstler's blog, reacting to the Friedman article,(I don't have a link but it can be googled I'm sure.) It's substance deserves very careful consideration and critique in its own right as we deliberate on our future.
On the other hand, I very much dislike the tone of the Kunstler blog and thus I am suggesting it be read both for the value of its substance and as an all too excellent example of how NOT to communicate. Given its tone its important substantive points are far less likely to be heard, just when and among those who may most need to consider them. The author has yielded to the centuries old style of exchange popularized in the British Parliament that regards ridicule and condescension to be essential elements of effective debate. They are not. They only get in the way.
Thus, at the level of substance, we have a seminal debate, absolutely critical to our collective future, that is well captured in these two articles. Let us consider the issues carefully but then, at the level of tone, let us change the dismissive debate into the respectful dialogue it must become. How we treat each other in the crisis will often prove as important as how we seek to resolve the crisis itself. These two articles are a good place to start as to substance, and a good place to change as to mutual respect.
Posted by: Nancy Glock-Grueneich | April 18, 2007 9:44 AM