Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Encyclopedia
Thomas Friedman
Thomas Lauren Friedman is an American journalist, columnist and author. He writes a twice-weekly column for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs including global trade, the Middle East, and environmental issues and has won the Pulitzer Prize three times.-Personal...
, proposing that the solutions to global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
and the best method to regain the United States' economic and political stature in the world is to embrace the clean energy and green technology industries. The title derives from the convergence of Hot (global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
), Flat (globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, as discussed in Friedman's book The World Is Flat
The World Is Flat
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is an international bestselling book by Thomas Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where all competitors...
) and Crowded (population growth
Population growth
Population growth is the change in a population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals of any species in a population using "per unit time" for measurement....
).
The book was released on September 8th, 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
. The audiobook was released simultaneously by Macmillan Audio
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
. The cover art is taken from Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights
The Garden of Earthly Delights
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch , housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was about 40 or 50 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious work...
.
Release 2.0 Updated and Expanded was published in November 2009.
Summary
In the book, Friedman addresses America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11 and the global environmental crisis. He advocates that global warmingGlobal warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the global middle class through produced the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded. The solution to the environmental threat and the best way for America to renew its purpose is linked: take the lead in a worldwide effort to replace wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation. This means that the big economic opportunities have shifted from IT (Information Technology) in recent decades to ET (renewable Environmental Technologies). Friedman frequently uses 2050 as a marker for when it will be too late for our world to reverse the harmful effects of climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
.
Friedman writes that the needed green revolution of the title would be more ambitious than any project so far undertaken: It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; and it will change everything from transportation to the utilities industry. This project is described in terms of nation-building.
The book alleges we've gone from the "Cold War Era" to the "Energy-Climate Era", marked by five major problems: growing demand for scarcer supplies, massive transfer of wealth to petrodictators, disruptive climate change, poor have-nots falling behind, and an accelerating loss of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
. A green strategy is not simply about generating electric power, it is a new way of generating national power.
Many of the primary points of the book were built out of his New York Times Magazine essay
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
" article
The Chapter 18 Project
Hot, Flat, and Crowded contains 17 chapters; Friedman has asked readers to submit ideas for the expanded edition's 18th chapter. He will use these ideas in a forthcoming expanded hardcover edition or the paperback edition. Users can submit their ideas and vote on others' ideas online.Editions
- 1st edition, Farrar, Straus and GirouxFarrar, Straus and GirouxFarrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
, 2008, ISBN 978-0-374-16685-4 - Unabridged Audio book, Macmillan AudioMacmillan PublishersMacmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4272-0458-5 - Abridged Audio book, Macmillan AudioMacmillan PublishersMacmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4272-0460-8 - Release 2.0 Updated and Expanded November 2009.
See also
- CollapseCollapse (book)Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 book by Jared M. Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles...
- An Inconvenient TruthAn Inconvenient TruthAn Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has given more than a thousand times.Premiering at the...
- Merchants of DoubtMerchants of DoubtMerchants of Doubt is a 2010 book by the American science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the climate change debate and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer...
- Requiem for a SpeciesRequiem for a SpeciesRequiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change is a 2010 book by Australian academic Clive Hamilton which explores climate change denial and its implications. It argues that climate change will bring about large-scale, harmful consequences for habitability for life on Earth...
- Storms of my GrandchildrenStorms of My GrandchildrenStorms of My Grandchildren is climate scientist James Hansen's first book, published by Bloomsbury Press in 2009. The book is about threats to people and habitability for life on earth from global warming.-Themes:...
- Why We Disagree About Climate ChangeWhy We Disagree About Climate ChangeWhy We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity was written by Mike Hulme and was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2009. As of May 2011 it has sold over 11,000 copies and was jointly awarded the 2010 Gerald L Young Prize for the best book in...
External links
- Official website
- Excerpt
- Thomas L. Friedman's Author Page at FSG
- An Encyclopedia of terms and issues related to the book
Radio
- NPR Interview on "Fresh AirFresh AirFresh Air is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. The show is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its longtime host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners. The show...
" with Terry GrossTerry GrossTerry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by National Public Radio....
, Sept. 8, 2008
Video
- "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", animated video for FSGFarrar, Straus and GirouxFarrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
- "Meet the Press", video interview with Tom BrokawTom BrokawThomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors...
, Sept. 7, 2008 - "Good Morning America", video interview with Diane SawyerDiane SawyerLila Diane Sawyer is the current anchor of ABC News' flagship program, ABC World News. Previously, Sawyer had been co-anchor of ABC Newss morning news program, Good Morning America ....
, Sept. 8, 2008 - "Charlie Rose", video interview with Charlie RoseCharlie RoseCharles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
, Sept. 9, 2008 - "Late Show" with David LettermanDavid LettermanDavid Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
video interview, Sept. 9, 2008 - Fareed Zakaria GPS Part 1 on CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, Sept. 14, 2008 - Fareed Zakaria GPS Part 2 on CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, Sept. 14, 2008 - MSNBC's Morning Joe Sept. 15, 2008
- BBC World News America with Matt FreiMatt FreiMatthias Frei better known as Matt Frei is a German-born British television news journalist and writer, presently the Washington, D.C. correspondent for Channel 4 News.-Personal life:...
, Sept. 23, 2008 - Good Morning America with Robin RobertsRobin Roberts (newscaster)Robin René Roberts is an American television broadcaster. Roberts is the co-anchor of ABC's morning show Good Morning America-Early life:...
, Sept. 24, 2008 - CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sept. 29, 2008
- ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos Roundtable Discussion, Oct. 20, 2008
- "Good Morning America" video interview with Robin Roberts, Nov. 6, 2008
- Video and Powerpoint Presentation with Panopto recorded with Politics & Prose bookstore, Washington D.C.
- Interview on The Daily ShowThe Daily ShowThe Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
, Nov. 11, 2008 - Interview on The Colbert Report on November 20, 2008
Interviews
- One-on-One with Fareed ZakariaFareed ZakariaFareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine...
, Sept. 7, 2008 - Interview and Podcast with Momentum Magazine, Sept.-Dec. Issue, 2008
Reviews
- "In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman Calls for a Green Energy Revolution", Garrett M. Graff, Wired Magazine, August 18, 2008
- "It's Time To Turn Down the Heat", Gregg EasterbrookGregg EasterbrookGregg Edmund Easterbrook is an American writer, lecturer, and a senior editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Wired, and Beliefnet. In addition, he was a fellow at the...
, Slate (magazine)Slate (magazine)Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
, September 8, 2008 - "Green Fantasia", Bill McKibbenBill McKibbenWilliam Ernest "Bill" McKibben is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College...
, The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, November 6, 2008 - "Flat N All That", Matt TaibbiMatt TaibbiMatthew C. "Matt" Taibbi is an American author and journalist reporting on politics, media, finance, and sports for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, often in a polemical style. He has also edited and written for The eXile, the New York Press, and The Beast.- Early years :Taibbi grew up in the...
, New York PressNew York PressNew York Press was a free alternative weekly in New York City, that was published from 1988 to 2011. During its lifetime, it was the main competitor to the Village Voice...
, January 14, 2009