http://www.eco-rescue.info
http://www.eco-rescue.com
Never forget this when you fill up your tank: When the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. What are the implications? These are excerpts from Thomas Friedman, the multi-Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and author (Hot, Flat & Crowded), while speaking at Governor Schwarzeneggers Global Climate Summit 2 in Los Angeles, October 2, 2009. See book review & verbatim of excerpt below.
Book Review From Barnes & Noble
In his latest best-seller Hot, Flat & Crowded - Thomas Friedman, the influential New York Times Op-Ed columnist, presses his case that Green is the new Red, White, and Blue. Friedman argues that environmentalism isn't just a survival imperative; it's the best way to make America richer, more productive, and, not least, more secure. Spanning the globe, he presents case study after case study that shows that Green-oriented practices and technologies are the key to revitalizing our country and stabilizing an increasingly energy-starved world.
Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the "most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation.... There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit." While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a "floor price for crude oil or gasoline," and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: "America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble." To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to "outgreen" China, modeled on Kennedy's proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of "petrodicatorship" and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman's earlier books.
VERBATIM: Second problem is petro-dictatorship. I call this chapter in my book fill her up with dictators. It is about the energy implications of our, the geopolitical implications of our energy use. The way I like to explain this problem is with a graph i created. I call it the first law of petro politics. What I did was not thick black wine on the bottom. I grabbed the average price OPEC oil from 1979 to 2006. And if you look at it, it looks roughly like that -- $80 back in 1979, gets down to $16 in 1995, roughly goes back to $80 in 2005. Went to freedom House and I got the freedom House freedom index.. In-house measures freedom. They measure political parties, are they open or closed, our women's groups open or closed, newspapers open or closed NGOs open or closed, in countries all over the world. They call it the freedom index. And I overlaid the freedom index on the price of oil just to see what it would look like for petrolist countries -- countries totally dependent on oil for their GDP -- Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria. And aren't if it does not look like that. was I tell you, what tells you is that the price of oil goes down in these countries, the niece of freedom goes up. And as the price of oil goes up, a piece of freedom goes down. I called back the first law of a petro politics. The price of oil and the pace of freedom actually operate in an inverse correlation in petrolist states.
no actually you do not need my graph to notice. You just recall that five years ago, our then Pres. George W. Bush met with Russia's Pres. Latin America with them, looked into his soul and reported back that he saw a good man down there. At the time, oil was $35 a barrel. If you look at Putin's soul at $135 a barrel, you will see Izvestia, prof Doug, the Russian parliament, and lately Georgia, all of which he swallowed, courtesy of $135 a barrel. Presence, the price of oil and the case of freedom operate in an inverse correlation. Never forget that when you fill up your tank.
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Free energy could have prevented this phenomenon, but hey! Who's counting?
267n100w 1 year ago