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#1 Photo Products - Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America
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List Price: $59.95
Our Price: $30.29
Your Save: $ 29.66 ( 49% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Macmillan Audio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.79073
EAN: 9781427204585
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 1427204586
Label: Macmillan Audio
Manufacturer: Macmillan Audio
Number Of Items: 17
Publication Date: 2008-09-08
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: 2008-09-08
Studio: Macmillan Audio
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: DICTATOR FOR A DAY
Comment: While I agree with some of the renewable energy issue, as an American, I have little trust of an individual that sees taking our personal liberties away for a day, see China for a Day chapter. This in an effort to "protect us" from ourselves. The last thing I need is the government, who can't even balance their own check book, tell me how to live or take my freedoms away for a day so they can push some agenda. While I'm not comparing the two, facisim starts with such beliefs. I'd read this book with a helpful spoon full of concern. Interesting book but not worth the read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hot, Flat and Crowded
Comment: I can't get as excited about global warming as Friedman has. First half of book paints worse-case scenarios in my opinion and is very tiresome reading - very repetetive and overdone with metaphors. Solutions in latter half of book are interesting, but are they all possible or necessary? Am usually a big fan of Friedman's recent op-eds, so a bit disappointed with the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 30% recycled content
Comment: Haven't read more than the synopsis yet, but are we to believe Friedman's call for a "green revolution" when it's published on 70% new paper, and only 30% recycled material?
That's a revolution?
When Friedman apologizes for his part in cheerleading for the waste of over a trillion dollars in Iraq, money which would be enough to make all the renewable fuel we would ever need, then he can say he's serious.
Sorry, Tom, some of your ideas are good, but they're coming from someone living in a credibility canyon. You showed us all what an ugly person you were when you endorsed the use of false pretense to attack a country which never threatened us:
"The ''real reason'' for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough."
[.................]
Customer Rating:
Summary: Deeply Intriguing Ideas Buried by Breezy Style
Comment: Thomas Friedman's writing is new to me, and from the glowing reviews of this book I expected a little bit more. I'm a climate change professional and one of those "revolutionary bureaucrats" that he praises in his book for doing the real work in protecting human health and the environment (thank you, Mr. Friedman), and I agree with 95 percent of his ideas and solutions - especially placing the true price of dirty fuel back onto the consumer (only then will people choose clean energy over dirty fuels). I give the book three stars mostly because it feels like a review of things I've already read, and it could have been written a little better. However, the book earns four stars if it's one of your first three books on the impacts of global warming; and if this is your first serious book on global warming I'd give it a top five-star rating.
Although the book puts together important ideas, my primary disappointment with the book is that it reads like one especially long newspaper article, very light and breezy, and almost glib in tone at times. A much better book if you want more on climate change and its impacts upon human societies is "Hell and High Water - Global Warming, the Solution and the Politics - and What We Should Do" by Joseph Romm.
I've also read thousand-page compendiums on climate change, so to me, the science of global warming is incontrovertible. That part of his book didn't require convincing for me. I'm not an economist, so I could not evaluate his economical solutions to the degree I'd like, although I do agree that externalities should be included back into the price of everything, especially chemicals, fuels, or processes that are harmful to the environment. One of my main disagreements I have with Mr. Friedman is that growth in the third world is necessary or good. Even the author admits that the world can't sustain any more Americas.
At least Mr. Friedman is exactly spot on about how the "green revolution" is more of a "green party", where everybody gets to feel good without actually accomplishing anything. If we want to keep the world livable for us humans, I'm certain that big changes, painful changes will have to take place.
I am also fairly certain that voluntary behavior change will not be enough to limit carbon dioxide emissions into the air. Which do you think is easier?
1): Convince the average motorist that high-mileage hybrid vehicles are the best vehicle to buy (even though they cost more upfront); or
2): Mandate higher minimum fuel efficiency standards that all vehicles must meet.
Personally, I know fuel efficiency standards work, because they worked in the 1970s very well. As for voluntary behavior, what is the market penetration of hybrid vehicles? A lot less than 5 percent. I'm an environmentalist, but I will not buy a hybrid until the price of gas becomes very, very, expensive.
Stay tuned, I think climate change is the most important story of our times. In a few years, the economic downturn (in late 2008) will be in the past, gasoline will be at $7 to $8 per gallon, and we will still be trying to keep the planet from turning into a desert - only the later we start to make meaningful change, the more difficult it becomes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interest and Thoughtful as usual but a tad over long
Comment: Thomas Friedman is one of the most insightful and thought provoking writers of the current era. Hot, Flat and Crowded does what each of Friedman's works do, they make you think and they provoke a discussion on the topic that he brings up. The nice thing about Friedman is that he isn't some gloom and doom prophet but more a cheerleader of change. I think that Friedman's greatest ability is that he gets people to discuss change without polarizing like so many other writers.
If there is one downside to any of his writing, it's that he can be too gushy, like someone with a new toy. While it's nice to see enthusiasm you cant help but wonder if that drives his thought process over detachment.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Thomas L. Friedman’s no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future. Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy— which he calls “Geo-Greenism”—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure. As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted “green revolution” has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.
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