Book Review - Climate Change

FRIEDMAN, Thomas L.: Was zu tun ist. Eine Agenda für das 21. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2009. 542 S. Gb. 24,80.

Markus Demele

Erschienen in: Stimmen der Zeit (228.Band/ Heft 2/ 2010), S.137-139.
Die Übersetzung besorgte Ernst Förster SJ

At least since his bestseller "The World is Flat" (2006) the multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman is also in Germany a well-recognised diagnostician of globalization. "Flat" meant then primarily "smaller". Not only corporations and states are the actors of globalization but the new communication and action networks are open to almost all men. In his latest book, its English title "Hot, flat and crowded" indicates better the topical line of approach than the German one, Friedman describes the world's future not only as flat but as hot and overcrowded. The two new attributes are landmarks of a new era: of energy and climate.

This passionate manifesto, published in the U.S. shortly before the election of Barack Obama, primarily aims at Friedman's fellow citizens. With partly naive optimism he wants to make clear to them that climate change is a reality that is much more life-threatening than war and terrorism. With U.S. pathos he evokes that only the U.S. as a global champion was able to save the world from the effects of climate change. Only a "Code Green", a radical change in energy policy - even as a supplement to the Declaration of Independence -, was in a position worldwide to maintain the United States' claim to economic and moral leadership. "Green is the new red, white, blue," Friedman thinks and tries thus to inspire both declared Liberals and conservative Republicans for his major project of a turn-around in energy policy.

Friedman admittedly gives many, but few really new facts. They are presented at length with enthusiasm and conviction. But there is a danger that the good arguments get lost in the collection of anecdotes and analogies, interviews and newspaper articles, which make up three-quarters of the book. By quoting the media entrepreneur Ted Turner, the analysis of the current state of the earth is put in a nutshell, "Too many people are using too much stuff." If the people in the emerging industrial and service nations would waste the same amount of resources as the countries of the West, climate change and environmental destruction would be irreversible. Using primarily the example of the oil consumption in the U.S., Friedman illustrates how the previous policy has not only promoted petro dictatorships, but it also prevented innovations in the field of non-fossil energy.

As an advocate of a liberal economy, Friedman believes that innovations for an intelligent energy system (energy-Internet) and developments focusing on the increase in energy efficiency can only be enforced by price signals in the market. Since he knows the ecological limits of the liberals' dogma of economic growth, he concludes that the reversal of trend can only be initiated by significant state interventions. Tax incentives for investment in green energy and the regulation of CO2 emissions by the industry are here among the rather harmless demands. The author even recommends a minimum price for crude oil to the governments and clearly rejects voluntary commitments of companies, "Here, we must not be dependent on voluntary compliance."

Friedman's wish to expedite the change in attitudes of his fellow citizens by his emphatical appeal makes an pleasant impression. However, two shortcomings of his reasoning are clearly visible: The required "environmental ethics" remains vague in its wording. Friedman argues often from an anthropocentric perspective, which rather corresponds to resource ethics and sometimes nature conservation ethics. The juxtaposition of man and nature is unfortunately seldom connected to eco-centered environmental ethics. The latter is in a holistic way aware of the necessity to save the remaining biosphere and its inhabitants in order to secure the survival of mankind. The normative claim of ecological ethics can definitely not be derived from the sole fact that Mother Nature gives us "beauty, astonishment and spellbound pleasure."

This book has a tragic blind spot in the awareness of international inequalities. Only once is mentioned that the victims of climate change are the people in the countries that have contributed least to its causes. This deficit is mainly due to the fact that poverty is here primarily seen as energy poverty. That in Nigeria only 19 from 79 power plants operate and 550 million people in Africa have no access to electricity, is multifariously declared to be an obstacle to development. But what remains vague is the prospect of the consequences which this unjust burden sharing of the effects of climate change has on the international community. The United Nations expect by 2010 up to 50 million climate refugees.

A book dealing with a "hot, flat and crowded" world must not only look at the rising China, but must primarily pay attention to the first victims of the change against which it wants to warn. The African Union rightly demanded 76 billion dollars per year from the developed countries, in order to be able to take at least minimal measures against the effects of drought and heat.

In his book Friedman develops impressive visions of how an energy turnaround could succeed. Certainly, with it he will inspire people and lend wings, if not to political then at least to individual changes in behaviour.