Sep 08 2008

Friedman burns McCain

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Tom Friedman is on a roll. He has, clearly, decided that the United States faces a pivot point. Either we will figure out smart energy policies and prosper, or we will fry.  As he looks to the election campaign, he has decided that the choice are clear. We might (MIGHT) prosper with Obama-Biden. However, WE WILL FRY with McCain-Palin.

And, here is a TV interview worth watching, absorbing, and sharing as Friedman lays McCain’s failures and failed concepts out on the table.

Friedman has a new book coming out that focuses on America’s energy challenges and … energy opportunities.

It will be a best seller.

And, Friedman will be on talk show after talk show, radio interview after radio interview in the coming weeks.

And, he is ready to speak strongly on these issues in the political campaign.

From this interview, for example,

Diane Sawyer:  “You’ve actually called him another representative of big oil.  Too tough?”

Friedman: No, I don’t think so.  Given the fact that his mantra has been DRILL! BABY! DRILL! And it has not been what I think it needs to be, “Invent, Baby, Invent!”  

There is a saying down in Texas, if all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, all you’ll ever get is all you’ve ever done.

If all we ever do is DRILL! DRILL! DRILL!, all we’re ever going to get is chasing the world’ oil price.

Hard to believe that I’m typing this: Tom Friedman, MUST WATCH TV!

6 comments

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  1. Let’s show him people read.

  2. in his comments about Oil being last century’s answer to this century’s needs & about alternative energy being the real solution.

    He was also right about how the Saudi’s would have been on the stage with McCain, high-fiving his speech.  They’d love to see us keep our focus on oil, since they’ve got lots and lots more than we’ve got & they know we’ll keep coming to them for our oil.  

    • odillon on September 10, 2008 at 03:12
    • #

    Fresh Air yesterday. Of course as usual he’s selling a new book, but his comments were good, nice and angry too. I wanted to pat him on the back after hearing him.

    Last night on Charlie Rose economics experts told a very worrying story about the economy’s being much worse off with lots more bad stuff to come, than most people realize. His economy people have tended to be right, even the doomsayers. Watch it if interested.

  5. This is off topic, but… did you read this story in The Sunday Times?

    Jason and the secret climate change war

    A shadowy scientific elite codenamed Jason warned the US about global warming 30 years ago but was sidelined for political convenience

    By Naomi Oreskes and Jonathan Renouf

    …

    These reports involve a secret organisation of American scientists reporting to the US Department of Defense. At the highest levels of the American government, officials pondered whether global warming was a significant new threat to civilisation. They turned for advice to the elite special forces of the scientific world – a shadowy organisation known as Jason. Even today few people have heard of Jason. It was established in 1960 at the height of the cold war when a group of physicists who had helped to develop the atomic bomb proposed a new organisation that would – to quote one of its founders – “inject new ideas into national defence”…

    In 1979 they produced their report: coded JSR-78-07 and entitled The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate. Now, with the benefit of hind-sight, it is remarkable how prescient it was.

    Right on the first page, the Jasons predicted that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would double from their preindustrial levels by about 2035. Today it’s expected this will happen by about 2050. They suggested that this doubling of carbon dioxide would lead to an average warming across the planet of 2-3C. Again, that’s smack in the middle of today’s predictions. They warned that polar regions would warm by much more than the average, perhaps by as much as 10C or 12C. That prediction is already coming true – last year the Arctic sea ice melted to a new record low. This year may well set another record.

    Nor were the Jasons frightened of drawing the obvious conclusions for civilisation: the cause for concern was clear when one noted “the fragility of the world’s crop-producing capacity, particularly in those marginal areas where small alterations in temperature and precipitation can bring about major changes in total productivity”…

    In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president. He was pro-business and pro-America. He knew the country was already in the environmental dog house because of acid rain. If global warming turned into a big issue, there was only going to be one bad guy. The US was by far the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. If the president wasn’t careful, global warming could become a stick to beat America with…

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