All Posts Tagged With: "Tom Friedman"

I ran across these notes I made from my own reading of “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” last fall. Two stories illustrate Friedman’s point about the importance of incentives and also of standards and regulation. We usually hear the side of the equation that regulations are going to cost the consumer more. This is not necessarily true, because when you are innovating, you can often design something to be manufactured more cheaply.

One example is from when the EPA issued the Tier 2 emission standards for locomotive engines in the early 2000s. It was a standard for NOx, not CO2. It had to do with air quality; carbon was not on the radar back then, although it should have been.

G.E. is the world’s largest maker of locomotives, and they do it in Erie PA. They could have just tweaked their engine design. Instead they looked at it as a clean slate. They went to the drawing board and designed an engine that met those emission standards, was much more fuel efficient, and much more reliable in terms of maintenance. The CEO of the locomotive division openly admits that it was that EPA regulation that caused them to innovate.

By having the standard, your competitor also has to meet the standard. There’s no more guesswork if you put all this time into R & D whether there is going to be a market for your innovation. It turned out that, because the G.E. locomotive was more fuel efficient, it also had much less CO2 emissions. G.E. sells all over the world – to China, India, Europe. Those countries were already starting to put carbon regulations into place. G.E. was ahead of the curve in curbing CO2. Their engine is still one of the only ones that meet the new regulations being passed around the world, including in China.

Another story comes from the early 1970s. Some of us are old enough to recall the brouhaha over the catalytic converter requirement passed in California. The Big Three automakers went to Congress and claimed that if they had to do this, it would cripple the entire American economy. Continued

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaOJrJ_oqFU[/youtube]

Today we have a guest review of "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," by Peter Van Buren of TerraLogos Energy Services . (Yes, they are re-branding! Expect the full roll-out of that in early September.)

First, the title bothered me. Plus, I am to the point where I am unable to take in any more information about how bad things are.

However, after the 12th good friend told me that I really should read this book, I checked it out from the library. They were right – it is excellent.

Friedman pulls no punches about what the future holds in store for us. But, he shows us the "quintessentially American opportunity" inherent in this crisis and encourages us to rise to the occasion.

I have pieced together some of my favorite excerpts on a downloadable PDF . They include utility company CEO’s extolling the business benefits of energy efficiency, and Green Hawks in the army explaining how to out-green Al Qaeda. My favorite, though, is the speech by a 12-year-old Canadian girl to world leaders at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. Her appeal is even more poignant and important today (page 6 of the excerpts).

She and I encourage you to Go Code Green !

(Editor’s note: if you live outside of Baltimore, MD, and you want to purchase the book, get it at Powell’s , the enormous independent bookstore in Portland, OR. In Baltimore, I encourage you to support one of our wonderful local stores — Breathe Books or The Ivy.)