Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Code Green: Hot, Flat, and Crowded


There is a growing opportunity as more and more local groups begin to form around climate change. In the Ventura bioregion we have seen the Ojai Green Coalition and VCCool generate a renewed interest in local activism. Even the kids are getting organized.

Aligning all this energy, and getting these latent activists up to speed is the first challenge. The next is finding ways to put EVERYONE to work on solving the looming crisis, which is actually the convergence of several crises all at once.

Thomas Freidman outlines a strategy in his bestseller, "Hot Flat and Crowded." He calls it "Code Green," or 'Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America'






Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.

This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.